Tian Mi Shi Liu
by Sugeatarc
Summary: It's four years after the war, and Toph is about to turn sixteen. But certain friends of hers have planned some surprises that go well beyond the typical party.
1. It's My Party

**Tian Mi Shi Liu**

**Chapter One: It's My Party**

The antique locust wood tables held the finest dumplings and sweetmeats available in the Earth Kingdom. The most talented musicians played exquisite melodies under the steady murmur of the guests, while paper lanterns in beautiful colors swayed in the warm, gentle spring breeze.

Toph had never been so bored in her entire life.

All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration. She had been at least this bored before Aang found her and showed her the way out of her parents' pampered prison. But it had been years since she had felt that way and she wasn't remotely nostalgic for it.

She couldn't see the lanterns anyway.

And she didn't really feel like mingling now that Aang and Katara had taken their leave, saying something about a spirit emergency out west somewhere. She had hoped they could stay at least a couple of days this time. Or that they might even take her along to help. No such luck. She guessed maybe they didn't want a third person crowding them right now.

Footsteps approached her hiding place. The door of the wardrobe creaked open and Teo's familiar scent wafted in. "Hiding again?" he asked. "The guests want to offer their congratulations and a toast."

"They've already toasted me about ten times. Now it's just an excuse to get even more drunk on my father's best plum brandy. They don't need me for that."

Teo sighed. "How about a walk in the garden then? Just you and me."

"Aren't you supposed to be setting off the fireworks?"

"I did all the set up work already – The Duke can handle the ignition." Teo took her hand and began to tug gently on it.

Toph grumbled at him, but levered herself out of the cabinet. It had been getting stuffy in there anyway. She listened carefully to Teo's heartbeat and breathing for a moment to be sure he wasn't overdoing it. Katara had become as skilled a healer as she was a fighter, but the life-long damage to Teo's back and legs was proving a challenge even to her talents. Still, Teo could walk now, after a fashion. His steps were slow and halting, and he had to rest far more often than he liked, and on bad days he still needed his chair – but he could walk. Teo had proclaimed this method of locomotion "not nearly as good as flying" but he was clearly delighted with his progress in what he sometimes called "leg bending".

Toph headed for a back entrance to the mansion, but was unable to avoid a small knot of guests hanging out by the door. They clustered around the two young people, laughing and waving glasses in the air. One of them bumped Teo and he swayed dangerously. Toph steadied him, then threw courtesy to the wind and shoved the guests out of the way. The one who had bumped Teo got an elbow in the stomach as a special gift; he made a startled gagging sound and sat down hard. And then they were out into the relatively free air of the back yard. There were guests here too, but fewer in number and in much smaller groups – two being the popular number. It would take the gardeners a week to clean up the mess being made of the solanga bushes, Toph was certain.

She sensed a couple of overly-dutiful guests headed their way for, no doubt, congratulations and a toast. She summoned an earth sled and scooted herself and Teo into the far back of the garden, where she knew there would be no lanterns, and thus no guests. Well, perhaps a few guests looking for some real privacy, but she trusted they'd be too busy with their own concerns to bother her and Teo.

"Not quite what I meant by a walk," Teo said, snickering.

"Too slow!" Toph snapped, then regretted it. "Ugh, Teo, I didn't mean it like –"

"Sh, sh, I know you didn't." He kissed her lightly, stopping her embarrassed protests.

Later, Toph would kick herself for letting down her guard, but honestly, was it fair for a girl on her sixteenth birthday, busy getting some snuggle time with her boyfriend, to get jumped by ninjas?

There were two of them. One glided carefully over the ground, while the other was a bit of a stomper. Unfortunately the stomper's footfalls pretty much masked the steps of the quieter one, so it took her a moment too long to realize there were two of them.

The stomper charged past her and shoulder-blocked Teo to the ground. He grunted painfully as the air was driven out of him. She aimed an earthspike at his attacker, but the second one pulled a blade with a whisper of steel and said, "Please do not resist, Lady Bei Fong, and neither you nor your companion will be harmed." His voice stopped Toph cold.

Teo, busy struggling on the ground, didn't hear this. He pulled a short metal rod out of his belt and swung it with great accuracy at his attacker's head. The rod was of his own design, with a core of liquid silver that moved as the rod was swung, adding additional force to the blow. It connected with a solid CRACK! and the stomper ninja dropped like a stone.

The first ninja yelped, "Sokka!", at which point Toph swept his feet out from under him with earthbending and deposited him neck-deep in the dirt, where he would be unable even to squirm, let alone firebend. The young Fire Lord would simply have to stay put until Toph decided what to do with him.

Sokka sat up, groaning. She heard him pulling his black mask away. "Stinking fish guts, Teo! That hurt!"

"Sorry, Sokka. It's the first time I've used it. It hit a lot harder than I thought it would."

"No kidding," Sokka grumped, feeling the bump on his head.

"At least he didn't hit you anywhere vital," Zuko offered from his earthy prison.

"Leave the jokes to me, Fire Lord Jerk." He turned back to Teo. "So let me see the design on that thing already. What exactly did you do to it? Hey, your Royal Jerkiness, can we get some light over here?"

"I'm kind of occupied at this second, O Eater of Rotten Walrus Blubber. Go grab a lantern. And try not to let everyone know you're here while you do it."

"Hey, I can do stealth! I'm stealthy! They call me Sokka the Silent!" He stood up and tried to imitate Zuko's gliding ninja walk, but ended up tripping and falling face first in the dirt. Teo failed to smother involuntary snorts of laughter. Toph decided not to let Sokka know that she knew he'd made the pratfall on purpose. Comedians frowned on the audience knowing all their secrets.

Sokka did manage to go grab a nearby lantern and return with it without incident, and he and Teo bent over the rod, Teo explaining and gesturing. After assuring herself that Teo was unharmed by Sokka's enthusiastic tackle, Toph ignored them and turned to stand over Zuko. It was one of the rare times she wished for normal vision so she could see what he looked like with just his head sticking out of the ground. What happened when you planted a Fire Lord? If she left him there and watered him regularly, would he sprout flowers?

She felt the earth start to warm up under her feet and let out a yelp of her own. "Sparky, don't fry my parents' garden!"

"Let me out and I won't have to." He sounded perfectly calm and reasonable, which she hated. She liked him better all flustered and flailing. He flailed so nicely.

"How can you firebend when you can't even wiggle your fingers, you cheater?" She glared down at him in mock outrage.

"Uncle and I have been spending more time in the Dragon Catacombs, trying to figure out how to …well, how to palace-train Shai, actually. But we stumbled on some interesting old firebending scrolls and we've been working on them. Only in the fireproof practice rooms, of course. Some of the scrolls are pretty badly damaged so our techniques are – let's just say we still have a lot of work to do. Now…are you going to let me out? Or am I going to turn this patch of the garden into glass? It might even be pretty that way, who knows?"

Toph snarled and made a chopping motion. The earth divided on either side of Zuko and then rose up and dumped him out. She tried to make him land on his head, but of course he just rolled out of it and stood up, brushing the dirt off his clothes. Then he further irritated her by giving her an excessively formal Fire Nation bow. "Thank you, Lady Bei Fong. And congratulations on this auspicious day of your Tian Mi Shi Liu."

She tried to knock him off his feet again, but he was ready this time and easily sidestepped the moving earth lump. "Sparky, you idiot, if you call me that again I'm going to bury you and leave you there until you take root. Imprison yourself in glass all you like." She paused. "Could you really do that, or were you bluffing?"

"A little bit of both. If there's enough pure sand in the dirt, and I get the temperature up high enough, it will turn into some really ugly glass. Pure beach sand works much better." Zuko shrugged. "But it wouldn't have helped me much here – the molten glass is hot enough to kill even a master firebender, and it stays that way for quite a while if I don't actively work to cool it down. Definitely not my preferred way to go."

"Really? Show me." Toph held out a hand and a fine grit sifted upward from the ground, collecting in her palm as a small pile of pure white sand. She offered it up to Zuko.

The firebender looked at the sand warily. "What exactly do you want me to do with that? And keep your suggestions clean, if you don't mind."

"Make glass out of it. I want to try bending molten glass. It's earth, right? I should be able to bend it."

Zuko blinked. "I hadn't thought of that. All right. Consider it a Tian Mi Shi Liu present then. Unless I set the garden on fire, in which case I was never here, and I have a palace full of people who will vouch for that." He paused. "As long as they don't think to ask Uncle, that is."

He accepted the sand, set it carefully on a clean flat rock, held his hands over it, and began moving them slowly back and forth. Sokka looked up, saw the sand beginning to glow dully in the darkness, muttered something about "showoff benders", then ignored the proceedings for a more interesting discussion with Teo about how to free liquid silver from raw ore without the need for a talented earthbender to help.

The glow increased and the heat became intense enough for Toph to take a step back. She was ever so slightly envious of how Zuko's firebending allowed him to keep his hands that close to so much heat without burning. Finally the sand glowed white hot, and shortly after that it stopped being individual grains of earth and became a thick and gooey superhot liquid. Nearby plants suffered singed leaves from the heat it was giving off.

"Okay," Zuko said, through gritted teeth. "If you're going to do something with it, Thumper, now's the time. But be careful!"

"I'm always careful." She felt her way into the glass. Yes, it would respond to her bending – more easily than solid rock would, even, due to its liquid nature. She wondered briefly if a waterbender could do anything with it. She wished Katara were here, and willing to try, like old times.

Toph forced her mind to stop wandering and focus on the task at hand. She shaped what she wanted first in her mind, then, slowly, with her dancing fingers. The glass danced in return. "Hurry up," Zuko gritted. He smelled heavily of sweat.

"Don't hurry an artist," Toph snapped, but tried to do as he asked – being so close to such an intense heat source was beginning to strain even Zuko's formidable resources, she could tell. Her fingers stroked the air, and the blob of glass shimmered in response and began to reshape itself to her direction. It took a few more minutes, during which she distinctly hear Zuko's teeth grinding, until she finally said, "Ok, cool it down, Sparky!"

Zuko pulled his hands away and at the same time bent out all of the heat he'd put in. A brief sharp crackle sounded, and suddenly the glass lost its liquid state and became as solid as it had begun – but changed.

On the rock sat a small statuette, about a hand tall. The light from Sokka's blue paper lantern made it glimmer softly in the night. It was a glider, and under the glass sail was a small but clearly recognizable Teo.

"Hey, that's nice work," Sokka said. "Since when can you do such delicate stuff?"

"Sparky's not the only one who's been practicing, you know." She tried not to sound smug but failed.

"That's great! I've got some designs the Mechanist drew up. He wanted me to figure out how to precisely cast some pretty small parts – looks like I've found the solution!"

"Hey, if you think you're going to conscript me –"

"SH!" Zuko cut off the nascent squabble with a sharp hiss, head lifting as he looked back toward the Bei Fong mansion.

"…sure I smelled something burning, Keung…" The voice was drawing closer to their position.

"My father's guards," Toph whispered. Sokka immediately pinched out the lantern as Teo scooped up the glass figure and tucked it away into his carrying pouch. Sokka lent a shoulder to Teo. Zuko started to offer an arm to Toph, but she glared at him and he thought better of it.

"The back wall," Zuko murmured. "It's where we came in. We've got supplies there."

Toph bent them an earth sled and, as quietly as possible, moved them all up to garden's far side. The wall here was sixteen feet tall, made of polished stone, and had nasty metal spikes on top. Fine for keeping out riff raff; hopeless against Zuko and Sokka. Without waiting for instructions, Toph merged the earth sled directly into the wall and they all went up and over in next to no time. Yet behind they heard louder shouts and running feet.

"Our silhouettes," Zuko muttered. "Must have seen them against the moonlight." He leaped off the earth sled, grabbed up two sacks at the foot of the estate wall, and hopped back on again in no more than two seconds. "Keep going straight, Thumper. Up into the hills. You know the cave system there, right?"

"Don't ask dumb questions, Sparky. That's where I met the badger moles."

"There are badger moles there?" For some reason he sounded alarmed.

"Last time I visited, about a week ago, yeah. Why?"

"Um. I left Shai up there."

"In the caves? How did you even get her in there?"

"She's pretty flexible."

Toph snorted. "Well, if you're worried about the moles, don't be. I'd bet on them over your overgrown lizard any day. If she tries to cook and eat them she's going to be in for a surprise."

"I'm worried about Shai, not the badger moles. She gets…er…playful sometimes." The young Fire Lord looked pained as Sokka started to snicker.

"She got 'playful' in the Air Nomad memorial shrine last month. Zuko decided he had to make a big symbol out of personally scrubbing the soot off all the statues. It took him about a week."

"You could have helped, you know."

"Hey, clean up after your own pet. Or order servants to do it in your name. What's the point of being a Fire Lord if you can't get peons to do that sort of stuff?"

Zuko's voice turned sharp. "They're not peons, they're people, and they already have enough to do."

"Oh, and you don't?"

"As you said, my dragon made the mess, it was my duty to clean it up." His tone lost some of its edge. "Besides, I like it in the Air Nomad shrine. It's peaceful and quiet in there."

"Oh, now I get it. You were hiding."

"Pretty much. No paperwork, and the diplomats and nobles didn't bother me since I was, ah, making sacred amends or something like that. Uncle phrased it nicely for me. It's about the closest thing I've gotten to a vacation in two years or so."

Toph realigned the sled's trajectory slightly, then asked "So if you're here, who's holding down the Fire Nation fort? …And what ARE you doing here, anyway? It doesn't look like you planned to attend my party. Not that I mind," she hurried to add. "I didn't want to attend it either."

"First question: Mai and Uncle. It's budgeting time again and Mai's much better with numbers than I am. After the fifth time she had to correct my sums she told me to go take a nice long walk and quit making more work for her, so I did. The second I thought was obvious – we're kidnapping you. Assuming you don't object?"

"No objection here, Sparky. Kidnap away. Do I get to know what my awful fate is going to be?"

"I suggested selling you to pirates," Sokka put in. "But we decided that was just too cruel to the pirates."

She freed one hand from guiding the sled just long enough to whack him in the shoulder. Sokka yelped in a nicely pained way.


	2. Up, Up and Away

Fic: Tian Dian Shi, Chapter Two

_**Fic: Tian Mi Shi Lui, Chapter Two**_

**By**: Sugeatarc

**Disclaimer:** I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.  
**Genre: **A little romance, a little humor, a little action  
**Characters/Pairing**: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up  
**Rating**: G

**Special Note:** After I named this story, a native speaker of Chinese told me that the more correct phrase for what I was after was something like "Tian Mi Shi Liu" and not "Tian Dian Shi". So I'm changing it. Please excuse any references to the old term I missed.

**  
Summary: **_Toph allowed herself to be shepherded toward the whatever-it-was. Definitely some kind of glider. That made her nervous. Teo led her over to it and nudged her to take a seat, which made her more nervous yet. "Uh, flyboy, you know how I feel about getting my feet off the ground…."_

**Chapter Two: Up, Up, and Away**

Up ahead, Toph sensed the earth rumbling. She braked the earth sled, recognizing the feel of a tunneling badger mole. But there were overtones to it she wasn't familiar with. "Okay, what's going on up there?"

Teo turned to look, just as a sinuous golden shape shot out from the cave mouth and began to circle in the air above them, making happy-sounding little snorts and chirps. Shai had gotten bigger since the last time Teo had seen her, although she still had a long way to go before she would reach the size of her parents. Her bright scales were tipped with tracings of blue, red, and in some places the colors mingled to lavender. The young dragon was a glorious sight, really; Teo wished Toph could see her.

Three full-grown badger moles erupted from the ground around the group and looked at the humans curiously. "Um, Toph – is this going to be a problem?" Zuko definitely sounded nervous.

"Nope. They're not mad. They're waiting for something. Not sure what, though."

Shai stopped circling, shot off a short distance, and landed lightly in front of one of the many cave mouths. The three badger moles disappeared back into the dirt. A moment later one stuck its head out of a cave mouth. Shai pounced and missed. A second mole popped up in a different cave; Shai pounced again and missed again. The third time she feinted toward a cave at her left, and when the mole popped up in the middle cave she jumped, and patted it lightly. The mole gave a squeak and showered the dragon with dirt. Shai took flight again to avoid getting any more on her, and came back to circle above the group.

"She looks pretty smug," Sokka said.

"I think she won the game, whatever it was," Teo said. "Pat-a-badger-mole or something?"

"As long as she didn't try to roast and eat them, I'm satisfied," Zuko said. He flicked a small puff of flame from his fingers; Shai followed it down, settled to all fours, and rested her head on the ground. She batted her eyes coyly at the young Fire Lord. Sokka snickered and muttered something about "Mai" and "jealous", which earned him a dirty look from Zuko. Sokka, still snickering, ignored it and made a beeline for the cave Shai had been waiting in. There was a clattering sound and a muffled oath from inside, then Sokka emerged carrying a strange contraption made of metal poles and canvas.

Teo perked up instantly. "Hey, whose glider is that? Mine's back at the Bei Fong mansion. I don't recognize the design."

"This is a sort of Tian Mi gift from me and your Dad to Toph. And to you, sort of, even though you hit sixteen a while ago." Sokka tripped on a piece of trailing canvas and nearly toppled. He swore again. "Come over here and help me get it set up already before I impale myself on one of these poles!"

Teo moved to his side, and between the two of them they began fitting the frame together and stringing canvas. Toph got only the faintest impression of what exactly they were building. "Sparky – do I want to know what's going on over there?"

"You'll find out soon enough," he replied. She thought about smacking him for that, but decided not to. Shai might take offense.

Toph noticed Zuko was petting the dragon's head, which Toph expected – but he was doing it with a rock. The stranger thing was that Shai appeared to be enjoying it. "Do you always pet your animals with rocks, Zuko?" It seemed more like an Azula-style activity, even though Shai was practically purring at the attention.

Zuko grumped at her under his breath, knowing full well she could hear every word. "It's lava-foam, as you'd have noticed if you'd bothered to check. Shai's going through a molt, and the dead scales peeling off itch. This helps. It's certainly better than having her try to scratch herself using the sides of buildings in the Capital – most of them aren't sturdy enough to stand up to her weight."

"You're becoming quite an expert on dragon care, Sparky."

"I don't have much choice. The Sun Warriors were specific when they paired us up – 'learn from each other.' Which means I get almost no help from them, just wide evil grins from the Chieftain when I ask how to deal with Shai's problems. Which means Uncle and I are reinventing the skill of dragon-raising and dragon-riding from scratch, pretty much."

"You can stop pretending it's a chore you hate, you know. You're not fooling me. You love every minute of it."

Zuko laughed suddenly, and Shai chirruped back, bumping him hard with her head. "Okay, Thumper, I'll stop griping. You could help me with this though, you know. Shai would appreciate it."

"Hm, yeah, I guess I could." She rooted herself and raised a cloud of grit and small stones from the ground. Zuko backed away hurriedly as the sand-cloud surrounded Shai, who gave a surprised squeak and looked worried for a moment. Then Toph began moving her hands in a swirling motion, and the sand cloud coated Shai's scales evenly (avoiding her still-fragile wing membranes) and began to scrub. Shai crooned loudly and rolled over onto her back, exposing paler creamy belly-scales etched with silver so Toph could get at those too.

Toph heard Sokka making exaggerated coughing noises from behind the Shai's wriggling bulk, and dropped the sand bath. Shai looked at her reproachfully. "We're all set over here!" said Teo. He sounded almost as happy as Shai had been a few moments ago. Toph heard the sound of wheels and the creak of canvas, but the whatever-it-was didn't have enough weight to it for her to get a good sense of its shape or purpose. Teo walked carefully over to her and wrapped a warm hand around her elbow. "If you would come this way, my lady?"

She gave him a light arm-punch for the unwanted formality, but allowed herself to be shepherded toward the whatever-it-was. Definitely some kind of glider. That made her nervous. Teo led her over to it and nudged her to take a seat, which made her more nervous yet. "Uh, flyboy, you know how I feel about getting my feet off the ground…."

"I think it's time you got over that. I'm tired of flying alone." As he spoke he was busy pulling straps around her and tying her in. She considered smacking all of them with earth spikes and making a run for it, but this experiment or whatever it was clearly meant a lot to Teo. So she gritted her teeth and put up with it. Teo tugged one last buckle into place, then bent forward to kiss her. She considered punishing him by turning her head away, but quickly discarded the idea. There was only so far she would go in a fit of pique, and doing without Teo's kisses was well past the line.

In a moment more Teo seated himself beside her and began his own strapping-in process. "Wait a sec," Toph protested. "What are you doing?"

"What's it look like? Strapping in! This things a two-seater!"

"Wait, WHAT? You can't get two people off the ground in a glider!"

"Hah!" Sokka snorted. "Just watch us. Er, I mean, you'll see. No wait, I mean – argh, you know what I mean!"

She did, of course. Years had gone by and Sokka still managed, with great regularity, to forget she was blind. It was rather endearing, really.

"Okay, so now that we're strapped in, what happens? It's not like we can launch from here. Not enough altitude." Toph avoided gliders like she avoided shoes, but you couldn't possibly hang out with Teo for more than a few days without learning more than you wanted to about the irritating contraptions.

"We're trying out a new type of launch." The sly tone in Teo's voice set off all sorts of warning bells in Toph's mind, but she didn't have time to do anything about it.

She sensed Zuko swinging aboard Shai's neck, at the junction of the young dragon's long skinny neck and her broad shoulders. A moment later she heard Sokka's running feet, and the Water Tribe warrior leaped up and landed neatly behind Zuko. "Get this oversize, spoiled catlizard in the air, Jerk Lord!" he commanded, and Toph's stomach dropped out the bottom of her shoes as Shai leaped into the sky, and the two-seat glider went with her.

"TEO, YOU MANIAC!!" she howled over the rushing wind. "YOU TIED THIS THING TO A DRAGON!! I WANT DOWN NOWWWWWWW!!"

"IT'S NOT TIED TO HER!" he howled back. "SHE'S JUST HOLDING ON TO IT! SHE COULD DROP US AT ANY SECOND! I THINK YOU'D BETTER HANG ONTO ME FOR SAFETY!"

Toph wailed wordlessly in a combination of rage, panic, and exhilaration, and grabbed onto Teo for dear life. Which he clearly enjoyed, the sneaky ratsnake. Up above, the pounding beat of Shai's wings steadied as she reached whatever height she was aiming for – Toph really didn't want to know how high – and things quieted down some, though air still rushed by at an alarming rate.

She became aware she was holding Teo's arms in a death grip, her head buried against his shoulder. In the name of all the itty-bitty earth spirits and their giant cousins, she hated flying! As the three young men had all known very well. But Teo was warm against her, and his arms, always very strong from his years of pushing his chair, were wrapped tight around her, and after a little while of steady smooth flight, she realized that there was the tiniest little chance that she might actually be enjoying this.

"Hey flyboy…"

"Yes, my lady?"

"Knock that off, I can't punch you when I'm hanging on for dear life. We're underneath Shai, right?"

"Yep. Don't worry, Zuko and Sokka tested this and she's got more than enough strength and endurance to handle the glider with two aboard."

"Teo, you can't really call it a glider when it's dragon-powered, you know!"

"…Huh. Ok, you have a point there. But it's a sound design. If Shai did have to drop us – which she won't! – the chair would be able to glide down to the ground safely. So there's nothing to worry about, okay?"

"I'm not worried," she lied, but it was only a small lie. "I was just wondering -- how long is this flight going to be, do you think? Are we just going up and circling around so you can scare me to death and get me to grab onto you?"

"Well, the grabbing on part is very important, of course. But no, we have a destination. Sokka said Zuko thinks it'll take maybe an hour or so to get there. Sokka didn't say where 'there' is, but he was grinning pretty evilly about it. Think you can survive an hour? We can land for a break if you need it."

"Don't say 'land' and 'break' in the same sentence, please. No, I think I can handle an hour….but only, of course, if you hold me very tightly."

"Oh. I think I can manage that."

"Sparky and Snoozles can't see us down here, right?"

She felt him craning his neck upward. "Pretty sure not. I can't see them. There's a lot of dragon in the way."

"Good." She pulled her legs up onto the seat so they didn't dangle so loosely into the open air and tucked herself into a ball at Teo's side. She would never be very tall, it seemed, but at times like this she counted that a blessing and not a curse.

"Yes, good thought. I have some privacy to court you properly, now that your Tian Mi Shi Liu is here."

"Court me 'properly'? Don't you dare."

"Oh, I plan to. In proper style as befits a lady of your status. I don't know where I'm going to get a snow-white ostrich horse, but I'll manage somehow. Going to need to hit up someone for a loan to get my courting suit made, but fortunately I'm pals with the Fire Lord, and he's loaded –"

"If you don't want to get pushed out of this thing, you'll shut up right now. I'd die of embarrassment if you did any of that 'proper courting' stuff, and you know it!"

"Come to think of it, I do. Guess I'll have to court you in my own way."

Despite the height and the wind and the lack of solid ground beneath her feet, the hour passed very quickly.

She and Teo came up for air when they felt the beat of Shai's wings begin to slow, and the glider swayed as the dragon began to move lower. Toph, of course, couldn't have seen their destination even if it hadn't been deep night, but Teo saw what looked like a mountain covered in tiny lights.

"HEY!" he shouted, waving at the two people up in the first-class seats on Shai's back.

"HEY WHAT?" Sokka's yell came back.

"WHERE ARE WE?"

"YOU DON'T KNOW? WELL, WELCOME TO THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF OMASHU, WITH ITS ADVANCED MAIL SYSTEM AND COMPLETELY INSANE KING!"

"We're going to see Bumi?!" Toph perked up. She enjoyed the old earthbender's bizarre sense of humor.

"Bumi – the really old strange-looking Earth guy who visits Zuko's Uncle a couple times every year?"

"Yup, that's him. He's a king of sorts – runs a big city on a mountain. Which, come to think of it, I've never visited!"

"I guess that explains this trip then." Shai descended and slowed some more, figuring out her landing. Zuko had gotten to his feet on her back – something that looked terrifying to Teo but didn't seem to bother Zuko in the slightest – and was flaring with light, trying to let her see the ground and find a safe place to put down. "There's one thing I still don't get though," Teo continued.

"What's that?"

"….What was with that crazy evil grin on Sokka's face back at your house when he was talking about this trip?"

End Chapter Two


	3. Down To Earth

**Tian Mi Shi Liu**

**By**: Sugeatarc

**Disclaimer:** I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.  
**Genre: **A little romance, a little humor, a little action

**Characters/Pairing**: Toph/Teo; lots of other familiar faces popping up

**Rating**: G/PG.

**  
Summary: **_Teo gulped again and turned what he hoped were pleading koalamb-eyes at the small earthquake in human form waiting to unleash destruction upon him – or possibly all three of them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zuko and Sokka taking refuge behind Shai, who looked at them in curiosity as they ducked under her neck. Not a good sign, he thought. _

**Chapter 3: Down To Earth**

Shai banked down toward the mountain, making the glider shudder and causing Toph to squeeze Teo hard enough to make him grunt. Zuko spotted a clear landing space on the road below and bent a long streamer of flame toward it. The dragon responded instantly, folding her wings and dropping straight down. Toph embarrassed herself by letting out a small shriek.

"That's the signal," Teo said cheerfully.

"Huh? What? Signal?"

"TIME FOR US TO FLY, ZUKO!" Teo shouted. He got a shout of agreement back, and then Shai dropped them.

Toph shrieked louder this time, and Teo suddenly found it hard to breathe. He struggled to get an arm free of Toph's bear-gator grip, and after what seemed far too much time, managed to grasp the control bar and pull the glider into a controlled descent instead of a wild fall.

"That would have gone a lot more smoothly if you hadn't decided to strangle me, slugger," Teo managed to croak out.

In answer, Toph punched him – hard – in the shoulder. "Y-you…you, you…" she sputtered. "YOU! MANIAC! I really should strangle you for that trick!"

"Ah ah, I wouldn't do that. Who'd fly the glider?" He made it tip and swing a bit. Toph yelped and glared at him. He grinned back. "Relax, my lady. I'll have you safe on the ground in a few minutes."

Toph growled low in her throat, and Teo wondered briefly if landing was such a good idea. Toph could get very inventive with her earthbending, and he might just have pushed her a little bit too far with this jaunt. But he couldn't stay up here forever. Probably best just to face up to the inevitable. He tried making small talk as he brought the glider in for a smooth touchdown next to Shai's glimmering bulk, but the low growling continued without pause, and he gulped and shut up.

The glider rolled to a stop within a few yards of where Zuko and Sokka awaited them, Zuko's guiding flames a beacon in the night. The two young men heard the low growling noise coming from Toph's seat and exchanged worried glances. Teo reach out to undo Toph's straps and got his hands slapped for his trouble. Toph freed herself, stood up very carefully, and then dropped flat to the ground. Teo started to struggle out of his own harness to help her, but Sokka waved him back.

Toph wasn't hurt and she certainly hadn't fainted. She was just hugging the earth to her as hard as she could – which was pretty hard, in her case. She planted a passionate kiss on the paved roadway, and murmured, "I love you, solid ground. Never leave me again."

Then she stood up and looked at Teo.

Teo gulped. With shaking hands he undid his straps and stood up on equally shaky feet. He stumbled his way over to Zuko, who lent him a steadying hand. Teo murmured, "Er…I might need to request diplomatic asylum from the Fire Nation…."

"What, and get Toph mad at me instead? No way, pal. You're on your own."

Teo shot a pleading look at Sokka. Sokka shook his head. "Nope. No help from the Water Tribe either. You're on your own."

Teo gulped again and turned what he hoped were pleading koalamb-eyes at the small earthquake in human form waiting to unleash destruction upon him – or possibly all three of them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zuko and Sokka taking refuge behind Shai, who looked at them in curiosity as they ducked under her neck. Not a good sign, he thought.

"Ah. Well. Er. I, ah, did tell you it would glide perfectly well without Shai…" he began.

It was the wrong thing to say. Not that he was sure there was any right thing to say except perhaps "Please make it quick and clean." Toph's fingers twitched, the paving stones leaped up, and Teo vanished into vaguely man-shaped cairn of rock. Toph stood there glaring at it, still growling. Zuko and Sokka shared another nervous look.

It was unclear where things would have gone from there, but other events intervened. The pile of rocks shivered, causing Toph to break off growling and jump a little in surprise. Then they turned to a pile of dust that floated down around Teo's ankles. Teo overbalanced – he had been leaning against the inside of the cairn, resigned to staying there for quite some time – and sat down hard on the road. He winced and tried to work some feeling back into his rubbery, overtired legs. Usually Toph would help him with this necessity, but asking her right now would definitely not be a good idea.

Toph was looking down the road toward the main city gates of Omashu, frowning. "Is that – but he said – "

She didn't get to finish as Aang shot down the road at top speed, grabbed her arms, and spun her around into an enormous hug that she was almost too stunned to return. "So what did Teo do this time?"

"Never mind Teo –what are you doing here? You and Katara are supposed to be dealing with some spirit thing out west!"

"Well, we are west," Katara pointed out as she came down the road at a more normal pace, walking with her own special fluid grace. She went to Sokka first for a sisterly hug and a disapproving look at the state of his clothing , which was disgraceful, as usual. Sokka was hard on his clothes.

"The spirit thing was a convenient little exaggeration," Aang explained. "I mean, we are west, and there are spirits here. There's just – no trouble!" He flashed his blinding grin at Toph.

"So why exactly did you run out of my party like that? Once you were gone they had no one to pester except me! They were like locustwasps!"

"Why do you think I left? I was taking all the attention away from you at your own Tian Mi Shi Lui party. That wasn't right." Another huge grin appeared. "Besides, I was getting tired of being swarmed too."

"So you abandoned me. Some friends you guys are!"

"Well, we knew Zuko and Sokka were coming to get you soon. Why so grumpy? Didn't you enjoy getting kidnapped?"

"Oh, that part was fine – it was the ride here! Do you know what these people did to me?!"

Aang looked puzzled. "You didn't enjoy riding Shai?"

"Shai I could have handled like I learned to handle flying on Appa. It was that thing!" She waved in disgust at the glider.

"Hey, does that have a double seat?" Far from sharing her outrage, Aang was instantly delighted with the evil contraption. He bounded over for a closer look. "So you could share a ride with someone who couldn't fly any other way? This is a great idea!"

"It is not a great idea!" Toph insisted, but Aang wasn't listening. He'd started asking Sokka a flurry of questions about how soon he could get one made for his own use.

Meanwhile, in the back of her brain Toph had been unconsciously taking note of a different scene playing out nearby. After greeting Sokka, Katara has wandered over toward Zuko where he stood at Shai's head. He stood still and let her come, but as she approached his arms opened and she folded into the Fire Lord's warm embrace. The rise in heartbeat and breathing was impossible for Toph to miss, even though she wished she could. "Watching" Zuko and Katara interact tended to make her feel very unsettled and more than a little sad.

After the two benders broke their embrace, they began talking quietly, some minor chat about daily business in Crater City, a brief discussion of Shai's growth and health, quiet laughter as Katara related an amusing anecdote about Aang's activities. Then Zuko murmured another question, very low, and Katara shook her head ever so slightly, her hands crossing over her flat belly. Toph heard the word "miscarriage" murmured and desperately wished she could somehow turn off her ears.

The situation between Zuko and Katara was very old news by now, but it never got much easier for Toph to witness with her heightened senses. The intensity of feeling between them was very nearly palpable, and time had not cooled the fires at all, that Toph could see. Yet barring an unimaginable tragedy, nothing ever could or would come of it. Aang needed Katara, and Katara didn't know how to betray a trust, especially one as important to rebuilding their world as her bond with Aang. As for Zuko, he'd tried betrayal, and it had scarred his soul much more deeply than Ozai's fire had scarred his face. He would not turn his back on Mai, who had risked her life to save his, nor would he ever risk disrupting Aang's support network. Some things, even some very deep and true things, simply could not happen with the world as it was.

And so everyone knew, and every ignored, what was between Zuko and Katara. What frustrated Toph most of all, though, was that she could tell Aang knew how it was, and wished for things to be different, and was willing to bend whatever rules stood in the way to make the two most important people in his life happy – the one who had saved him, and the one he had saved. Air Nomads had had very open marriage customs compared to the other three nations, and many things were possible among them that were simply not acceptable elsewhere. On more than one occasion Aang had confessed to Toph his ideas for how to adjust the situation, ideas that would only have worked if all of the people involved had been Air Nomads. But they were not, of course. And so it went.

Shai looked up at the sound of rushing air, and gave a delighted squeak. Zuko and Katara barely had time to get out of the way before Shai launched herself up at a vague white and brown blur now hovering over the group. Appa roared in hello, and the animals began to engage in a spirited game of air tag, which Toph could hear even if she couldn't see it. Given that it was night, though, probably no else could see much of it either. She wondered if Momo were up there mixing in, or being sensible and hanging out somewhere else spectating.

"Sorry about that," Zuko said. "She's young and impulsive."

"Yeah, making the two of you a great match," Sokka got in before anyone else could say it.

Zuko rolled his eyes at the Water Tribe warrior. "Really, Sokka, that was way too easy for you. Aren't you ashamed of yourself for being so obvious?"

"Hey, I take straight lines wherever I can get them. I'm not proud."

"Clearly not," Zuko said, in the snottiest high-noble tone he could manage, which was a fairly good one by now.

A new voice broke in. "Is that catlizard of yours going to leave droppings all over my city?" While the gang had been greeting each other, a small contingent of guards lead by an old man in a cape and feathered hat had approached them from Omashu.

"Hey Bumi!" Toph called. "Aang made a hole in your road!"

"Hey!" Aang squawked. "I did not!"

"Yeah you did! You dusted those paving stones I was using!

"Using to pen up poor Teo!"

"Hey, he deserved it!"

"QUIET!" roared Bumi, and they fell silent. "I asked an important question and I want it answered!"

It took a minute or two for them to remember what the question had been. Oh yes. Dragon droppings. They looked at Zuko, who looked uncomfortable. "Er…I can try to make sure she doesn't, Bumi. But she's not, um, fully trained yet…"

"Good!" Bumi said. "We need the fertilizer!"

Zuko stared at him for a moment, then remembered who he was talking to. "Right. Of course you do. Well, you're welcome to whatever Shai…produces."

"Wonderful! I bet it's excellent for growing cabbages! We like cabbages here, you know." He waved a hand at the hole in the road and the paving stones reconstituted themselves from the rock dust and settled back into place. Then he waved at the fires Zuko had made to provide light. "Put those out, boy, and let's get inside. The night's getting late, and we've got a lot to do." Bumi looked directly at Toph and grinned his most insane grin. "Oh yes indeed….a LOT to do."

(To be continued)


	4. Down Deep

Tian Mi Shi Liu, Chapter 4

4

**Tian Mi Shi Liu, Chapter 4: Down Deep**

The group proceeded down the roadway to the main southern gate of Omashu, the green fire of the guard's torches casting eerie shadows along the stone path. Toph was unclear on the concept of "color", but the others had described the strange fires to her in Ba Sing Se, and she could smell the faint acrid odor from the salts used to make the flames burn emerald. For some reason she found herself getting a bit uneasy, which struck her as utterly stupid given she was surrounded by friends, including the Avatar himself. Stupid or not, though, her instincts insisted that something here was not quite what it appeared.

It's just that green-fire smell, she told herself. It's reminding me of Long Feng and his gang of creeps in Ba Sing Se, that's all.

Certainly no one else in the group appeared to be feeling anything other than pleasure at being reunited with dear friends on a special day. Teo was a little nervous, but that was directed right at her – she guessed he was wondering if she was genuinely angry with him. The answer was "of course not", but she had no problem letting him worry a while longer. The glider flight was one thing, but the dragon-drop at the end had been truly terrifying, and he deserved to sweat at least as much as she had. Plus maybe a little extra, just for the embarrassment factor of making her shriek like a child in the presence of Zuko and Sokka – particularly Sokka, who would probably require some serious pummeling before he'd stop teasing her about it.

While she was mulling this over, Aang kept up a running commentary regarding the ongoing resettlement efforts with the Fire Nation colonials. After years of hard work, only the most intractable villages were refusing to negotiate, and Aang remained determined to finish the work without bloodshed. Toph got the impression that Zuko was frustrated enough to start shedding at least a little bit of non-lethal blood, if it would finally bring an end to the issue, but he had, as usual, bowed to Aang's preferences. At the back of the group, Katara chatted with Sokka and Zuko, although her focus was on the project to develop a reliable system of transport using the Fire Nation hot-air balloons, which she wanted to employ to be able to quickly move waterbender healers around to wherever they might be most needed in case of widespread illness or a natural disaster that managed to sneak past Aang's vigilance. At least there was no shortage of firebenders to power the transports.

Teo trailed slightly behind her and Aang, not saying much of anything. Toph took a closer "look" at him and realized he was struggling not to fall behind – overdoing it yet again rather than trouble the group to slow down for him. He'd be limping soon, and by tomorrow he'd be bedridden from the pain in his back and legs. Toph planned to sic Katara on him at first opportunity. In the meantime, though….she shaped a few simple motions with one hand down by her side, and a section of walkway under Teo's feet began to move. She was careful not to topple him over as she set up the slideway. He stumbled a little, then realized what was happening and slowed down with a grateful sigh as the moving earth began doing most of the work of walking. Toph noticed a flicker of interest from Bumi at her actions, but he didn't say anything, and everyone else had seen this trick before. The guards might be puzzled if they realized Teo was taking only one step for every two of theirs, but they'd seen stranger things in Bumi's service, she was certain.

Just inside the gates, Bumi waved the parade to a stop. "Why don't the rest of you go off and get a nap or something while I talk to the Lady Bei Fong?"

"Good luck with that," Toph growled. "My mother is about an hour due west by dragon flight, Bumi."

"Ooh, testy. I like that." He waggled his outrageous bushy eyebrows at her. "All right then, I'd like to speak to Little Miss Bei Fong, then. I suppose until the dawn comes you're not officially an adult anyway!" Toph started to make an outraged retort, but Bumi cut her off. "Tian Mi Shi Liu rules, not mine! Not adult until the dawn! So come talk to me, the time will pass faster, eh?"

"ONLY if you promise not to call me anything but TOPH!"

Bumi snickered. "I'm the King here, Toughie Toffee, and I'll call you what I like!" She heard Sokka snickering, and twitched her fingers. The ground dropped him unceremoniously onto his rear. She heard him yelp and smiled grimly. Far too many people were having too much fun at her expense tonight for her taste.

"Fine. Whatever. Let's go, Bumi." Head high, she stalked away from the group.

"Wrong way, Little Miss Toughie." Bumi clearly was not going to stop with the nicknames. Toph wished he'd at least come up with some better ones.

"All right, all right. Let's go and get whatever this is over with. If it's some kind of Tian Mi Shi Liu surprise present, I hope it's a good one after all this fuss."

"Be careful what you wish for, my dear."

Now what did that mean? Only one good way to find out. She'd have to go along with whatever craziness the "mad genius" had come up with. "Katara, while I'm gone, would you take a look at Teo? He's been overdoing."

Katara shot a look at Teo, and Teo cringed slightly – not because he minded Katara's healing, but because he knew she'd chew him out the whole time she was repairing his self-inflicted damage. Katara could be very gentle, loving, and compassionate, but she did not appreciate her patients ignoring her orders. Such behavior was certain to bring out the side of Katara that fought in and helped to win a one-hundred year war, which was not very gentle at all.

"I'll take care of him, Toph," Katara promised. There was just the tiniest hint of menace in her tone. Teo cringed even further away and accidentally overbalanced. Aang zipped over and caught him before he hit the ground, which saved him a little embarrassment – but not much. He watched Toph walk off with Bumi – they even left Bumi's guards behind – and had to fight down the urge to run…well, limp slowly…after her.

Bumi led Toph through several side streets. By the smell of them, they weren't exactly the kingly quarters. And Bumi seemed to be getting lost a lot – he probably didn't spend much time down here. She became aware that some of the locals were stopping to stare at them. Bumi waved at a few of his people, but mostly he just ignored the lookers. "Bumi, if I asked you where we were going and what we were doing, you wouldn't answer, would you?"

"Of course I'd answer! I'll tell you all about how I hired Gān Lán Cài as my financial advisor of cabbage. Poor guy. Went through about ten of those carts of his, and was facing ruin when I --."

"Wait, wait, what's that got to do with – oh, never mind."

Bumi snorted with laughter – a particularly unpleasant noise. He led her to an alley that looked like a dead end, but Toph could tell there was a vertical shaft at the end of it. It did not smell good. They must be close to the city's sewers. Toph remembered the tales the others had told of using the sewers and some of the sewer inhabitants to aid the locals under attack by Ozai's soldiers under the command of Mai's father. Turned out Mai's father was basically a decent guy, and her family was being very useful in helping to put Aang's colonial resettlement plans into effect. It was a reminder that good people sometimes found themselves stuck working for evil regimes.

She wondered if Bumi planned to give her a pet purple pentapus for a Tian Mi gift. Perhaps she was supposed to go down into the sewers and pick one out for herself?

Bumi led her to the end of the street and stepped onto -- nothing? Toph pulled back and focused her senses. No, not nothing – Bumi was standing on a solid surface of wood inside the shaft. Compared to rock it barely registered on her ground sense. Toph guessed it was an elevator platform of some kind, though it being made out of wood instead of stone like everything else in Omashu made it a trifle strange. Still, better to just go along and get things over with. She stepped onto the uninviting wood surface, hating the way it muffled her special sight, and waited.

Sure enough, the platform dropped down the shaft, moving fast enough that Teo might have declared it a fun ride. Being unable to see, Toph didn't like it quite so much. She hung on hard to the metal chain that was controlling their descent, needed the feel of something solid under her hands.

After what seemed like a remarkably long descent, the platform came to a stop with a dismaying splash. They had landed in water. Fortunately it smelled like fresh water, not sewage. Still, it was water. She was on a wooded platform, in water. She was blind for real in here, which was always unsettling.

Toph was more unsettled yet when she heard Bumi fumbling at the chain. "Step back and let go," he ordered, and she politely did so. He unsnapped something, and she felt the rush of air as the chain parted company from the wood and Bumi, hanging onto it tightly, ascended at a high rate of speed up to the ceiling and then back up the shaft with a jubilant "WHEEEEE!", leaving her alone and blind in the middle of what was probably the city's main fresh water cistern. She could sense no rock or earth anywhere nearby. She was deep within the mountain's core, afloat on a wooden platform, and completely alone.

"Oh, pooh," she sighed, unable to come up with anything strong enough to accurately reflect her feelings about Bumi's sense of humor, or whatever this strange prank was.

From across the water, she heard a faint call. "Toph? Is that you?"

"Teo?!" She spun around, making the wooden platform – now a raft, really – tilt precariously. The voice had come from behind her. Other than that, she couldn't tell a thing. Damn Bumi, leaving her truly blind like this!

"Yeah, I'm down here too."

"Why? Are you okay? Did Katara fix your legs? What's going on?"

"I don't know why, I'm fine, yes she did, and I haven't the foggiest idea. I thought you might."

"How did they get you down here?"

"The guards asked me politely. No one else seemed to think anything strange was going on. I'm beginning to think I was set up here."

"You were set up?"

"Yeah. Zuko and Sokka didn't say anything about all this stuff – they just said they'd show up and make things more interesting for you at the party. I didn't know about the new glider or Omashu or any of it. I was just supposed to get you into the back of the garden so you could get 'jumped by ninjas'."

"Oh, I get it now. But you sounded pretty serious fighting Sokka back there – that clubbing and all?"

Teo sounded somewhere between embarrassed and proud. "Well, I didn't know my new truncheon design was going to be quite so effective. We're lucky Sokka has a thick skull."

"At this point, a small part of me wishes you'd totally brained him. Then we wouldn't be stuck here participating in one of Bumi's stupid pranks. Normally I like the guy's sense of humor, but this really isn't all that funny, with the wood and the water and all."

"Didn't Aang say he did something like this during the war years?"

"Yeah, but Aang's the Avatar, and Bumi was just trying to help him, in his own strange way. I'm not anyone special, and I don't need Bumi's help for anything that I'm aware of."

"I think you're very special."

"You should hold onto lines like that for when I'm close enough to kiss you, you know."

"I'll take an IOU. As for Bumi's help – maybe he's just trying to amuse you?"

"I don't know…there's something about this that seems not exactly like a complete prank. I just can't figure out what, or why."

Teo seemed to mull that over. "I guess I'd have to agree. All of the others looked kind of solemn when I walked off with the guards. Not upset or unhappy or anything, just a little more serious than I'd expect."

"What, all of them? They're all in on it?"

"Looked like it to me."

Toph sighed again. 'I am going to have so many butts to kick when I get out of here."


	5. Waterlogged

4

**Tian Mi Shi Liu, Chapter 5: Waterlogged**

It was cooler inside the underground cistern than it had been outside. Spring had arrived in the outer world, but it hadn't had time to warm the mountain springs that fed the wells of Omashu, and Toph could feel a cold mist hanging above the surface of the water. She shivered a little, wanting the warm embrace of the earth. Toph had never understood, nor perhaps ever would, why anyone would rather belong to chill water, searing fire, or fickle air. Maybe she should ask Aang about that sometime.

"So what do we do now?" Teo called. She noticed the edge of a shiver in his voice.

"I think the first thing we should do is get together." That would at least help with the "staying warm" part of their current set of problems. "Is there anything between us but water? A rock spire maybe?"

"Nope. Just water. I think this platform is anchored with ropes – it hasn't been drifting, while yours has, a little."

"Am I drifting toward anything useful?"

"Nope. You're moving toward the center of the cistern. I'd guess that's where the water is drawn out, so there's a downward current there." Teo, of course, had been reflexively analyzing the workings of Omashu's water system. He could no more stop doing it than Toph could stop being an earthbender. Toph wondered if there could be such a thing as an idea bender, a category she could easily place both Teo and Sokka in. Teo went on over her thoughts, "I guess I'll just have to drop in and swim to you."

"Hey wait! Don't do that!"

"I can swim pretty well, Toph. Arm strength and all that."

"Yeah, but if you dunk those overused leg muscles into cold water you're going to seize up with cramps, most likely. Katara can't have had enough time to do a really thorough job with her healing. Plus, have you still got your fighting gear with you?"

"Sure. Why?" Teo's weaponry consisted of his truncheon, a short hunting knife, and a very clever buckler made out of thin metal leaves that collapsed together for easy concealment and carrying, but could snap open and lock in an instant to give him some protection and cover in an emergency. Teo had devised this item by studying the way Suki's fighting fans folded, and was quite proud of the design. Suki had been mildly miffed at his invention, expressing an opinion that it was disrespectful to the traditions of Avatar Kyoshi – until Aang told her Kyoshi thought it was a good design too. There wasn't really any way Suki could argue with that. Toph wasn't sure if Aang had been telling the literal truth there about Kyoshi or not, but she trusted his judgment about the minds of his predecessors.

"That stuff will weigh you down unless you leave it behind," she insisted. "And given what I've heard about Bumi's games, you may end up needing it. Else the guards would have taken it off you, I bet."

"That would kind of blown the cover of 'nothing strange going on here, nope' though, wouldn't it?"

"By that point, did they really care?"

"Probably not. But I'm certainly not going to just sit here and wait for Bumi to come get us. Most of this fuss seems to be directed at you, so there's no way I'm just going to stay over here and leave you all by yourself. Just hold on – it should only take me a few minutes."

Toph heard his equipment start to hit the wooden platform in a series of dull thunks. Resisting the urge to curse macho idiot guys, she took a deep breath, aimed herself toward Teo's voice, and jumped into the water.

She heard Teo shouting at her as she came back up, teeth already chattering from the cold. "What are you doing? You idiot!"

"S-s-stopping you from d-drowning yourself, you idiot!" She shouted back, paddling frantically. After what had almost happened at the Serpent's Pass, Suki had insisted that she learn to swim, even if only a little bit. After several long months of persuasion, bullying, threats, and finally an appeal from Aang, the swimming lessons had taken place. Many months later, Toph had finally learned enough to keep her head above water and move around a little bit, and had decreed the lessons to be done. Despite continued harassment from certain parties (mostly with names starting with "S"), Toph had stood firm as only she could, and there had been no more deliberate dunkings beyond the occasional wade in Zuko's huge ornate turtleduck pond.

Toph was starting to regret that, just a little. Teo sounded like he was getting ready to jump in after her. "Don't you even th-think about coming in!" she shouted through her rattling teeth. "The absolute best thing that could happen is that we'll both be cold and wet instead of just one, and the worst I don't even want to think about! I'll g-get there. I'm slow, but I can m-m-manage. Just stay put!"

She heard Teo cursing, but she did not hear a splash, which was the important thing. "Keep on with the b-b-bad words," she suggested. "It gives me something t-t-to home i-in on."

Naturally Teo immediately switched from cursing to statements like, "Come on, slugger!" and "Not much farther now!" and "You can do it!" which just made her want to smack him really, really badly. She had much preferred the curse words.

After a long period where she seemed to be making no headway at all, and where she worried she could feel that center current Teo had talked about trying to drag her back and down into the depths, warm hands closed around her flailing wrists, and Teo lifted her bodily from the water onto his wooden perch. She sat there dripping and panting from a mix of cold and exhaustion. Toph did not get winded easily, but thanks to the combination of an unfamiliar kind of physical exertion and a very unwelcome gut fear reaction, she was definitely short of breath. Teo pulled his shirt and that silly scarf he insisted on wearing off and tried to wrap them around her for warmth. They didn't help much, but his arms were a definite improvement. She burrowed in tight. "Th-this is the o-only t-time I've ever wanted t-to be a firebender," she groused into his chest. "S-stupid Zuko can go sw-swimming in the s-stupid artic a-and not g-g-get cold. S-stupid Fire Lord."

Teo chuckled and held her tighter. "Hey, is this a good time to collect on my IOU?"

"N-not until my teeth s-stop ch-chattering, flyboy." Teo's body was doing a pretty good job of warming her up, even if he wasn't a firebender. "I-I'm fresh out of ideas, here. I can't see, I can't bend, and I'm almost too c-cold to think."

"I think we should work out a way to get to shore," Teo said.

"Th-there's a shore?"

"Yep. It's not completely dark down here – there are some of those green lamps burning over that way." He took her hand and pointed to give her a direction. "I can sort of see what looks like a beach or a low area. Everywhere else just looks like water. I mean, there have to be rock walls out there somewhere, but it's too dim for me to see how far away they might be."

"On the other hand, those lights are probably a trap," Toph said.

"Yup. Pretty much a certainty, if this is one of Bumi's testing games. You think there's any point in trying to avoid it? Maybe that's what you're supposed to do?"

Toph's teeth had begun to settle down, and the shivering was easing off. "I have to say, I'm not really feeling like worrying about what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I want rock under my feet, and I want it, like, yesterday."

"Gotcha. Hm. Well, how about you take this." He picked something up off the platform and handed it to her. It was the expanding fan-buckler. The thin plates of metal rang faintly as she opened them out. "I'll get to work on cutting the ropes." He flattened himself to the wood and reached over the side, sawing away at the slimy mooring under the platform.

"You know I hate to sound stupid, but what exactly do you want me to do with this?" She turned the buckler back and forth in her hands.

"Make a paddle. Or better yet, two, if there's enough metal."

"What? But that would destroy it!"

"I can make another, you know. I have the plans. And I can't think of what else we could use to move this thing. Even if both of us hang over the side and kick, between my weak legs and your lack of skill I don't think we're going to do anything except help it move into the center more quickly. And it would take forever to cut paddles from the platform using just my knife. Go ahead, slugger, just bend it. I really don't mind."

Toph sighed. "Okay. But only because I'm too cold to think up a better idea right now. And Bumi's going to pay for this, I swear." She focused on the thin overlapping plates, and then ripped them apart as if they'd been made of rice paper, growling under her breath. The fan shield had been Teo's pride and joy. It wasn't something to be destroyed for one of Bumi's games. She promised herself that she'd find a space rock to make the metal for the replacement he would fashion. Space rocks were harder to find now that the comet was long gone, but they'd found one to make a new space sword for Sokka – she'd scour the world if necessary to find one for Teo's shield.

Teo stopped just short of cutting the last tether rope away and turned to see what Toph was doing. She had divided the steel from the shield plates into two roughly equal lumpy rods and was frowning at them. "How's it going, slugger?"

"Er. Well. How exactly do you make a paddle, anyway? I never go in small boats if I can possibly help it."

"Oh. Here, let me guide your hands." Teo described the shape of a short but efficient paddle for her, drawing shapes on her palms that tickled and made her giggle. Then he covered her hands with his and guided her motions as she molded the metal like soft butter, swiftly producing two short but usable flat metal paddles. The metal was a little thin and might bend under heavy force, but they both hoped it would hold long enough to move the platform over to the lighted landing.

It took more than a few minutes – the platform was heavy and not inclined to be moved through the water against the current – and Toph had to repair the paddles more than once, but finally the raft's edge crunched on gravel. For the second time that night Toph jumped from her means of transport and began hugging and kissing the ground. She heard Teo chuckling at her.

Suddenly she tipped her head up, then climbed to her feet, looking toward the end of the landing area, beyond the green lamps.

"What is it?" Teo asked, getting out his truncheon and claiming the paddles too, just in case.

"Not what. Who. Someone's just come in through the door down there." Someone with familiar and welcome footsteps. "Hey, Katara. Good to see a friendly face. So to speak. Could you maybe dry us off?"

"Hi Toph," Katara said, stepping forward into the strange green lamplight. It made her look unfamiliar to Teo – like a stranger. "Hi Teo. Oh, what happened to your shield?"

"Toph made paddles from it."

"That's a shame."

"Not a big deal," he said. "I'll just make another when we get home."

"That's not what I meant." Katara's blue eyes gleamed with a turquoise glow in the green light. "I meant – it's a shame, because you're going to need it."

She lifted both arms high, and the water rose up around them, roaring like an angry dragon.

(To be continued.)


	6. Parole

_**Chapter Six: Parole**_

**Summary: **_"If Bumi wants a Rumble he should do it himself, not send out substitutes." Toph sent rock spikes to close in on the waterbender from four sides at once; Katara spun in place, and a cyclone of water smashed them to bits. "I'll fight him any time he wants, and he ought to know that."_

--

The first wall of water that crashed down was more a warning than a real attack. Toph's earth walls deflected it easily.

"Watch it, Katara!" Toph snapped. "You know I'll throw down with you any time, but not when there's someone else around to get hurt!" Teo had crouched down close behind the foremost of the earth barricades and was busy putting something together; she couldn't tell what.

"Sorry, Toph. You're not making the rules here." Another sheet of water rose up and crashed down toward them. Toph blocked it with a flick of her wrist and a scowl.

"I get that. Bumi is. Question is, why are you going along with that old loon? I know you're not planning to hurt either me or Teo, so what's the point of this?" She sent out a rock spike toward Katara just to show she wasn't going to stand there and be soaked. Katara scythed it in quarters with a water whip before it got anywhere close.

"I certainly don't want to," Katara admitted. "But you don't know exactly how…persuasive Bumi can be, Toph. Trust me on this – the only way out of this place is through me. And I'm going to do everything I can to stop you, short of killing you. Got that?"

"If Bumi wants a Rumble he should do it himself, not send out substitutes." Toph sent rock spikes to close in on the waterbender from four sides at once; Katara spun in place, and a cyclone of water smashed them to bits. "I'll fight him any time he wants, and he ought to know that."

"It's not as simple as that." A double fistful of water spikes lanced out from Katara's hands, impaling the wall that was sheltering Teo. He yelped and ducked.

"Teo!" A little ball of rock-hard anger settled into her stomach. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he said. "Nothing got through. But when you get a second, I need a favor."

Another set of ice shards slapped into his protective barricade. Teo flinched but didn't make a sound this time. His heartbeat and breathing had sped up, but he didn't seem frightened. No doubt he was certain Katara wouldn't actually harm them. He'd never had to spar with the Sugar Queen himself, or he wouldn't be so blasé about it, Toph thought. Katara wouldn't do any permanent damage when sparring, but what counted as "temporary damage" to a healer covered a broad range of quite painful options. Toph reinforced Teo's shelter and made sure it had an overhang to protect him from water and ice showering down from above. "Favor? What is it?"

"Take this," he murmured. He held something out. Toph shifted her bending stance to free up a hand, and took his offering. It was a small metal ball, perfectly spherical except for some roughness around the middle from where the casting mold had come apart. "Can you make me a hundred or so like that one from rock? They need to be very smooth."

"Uh – " Toph noticed that the tide appeared to be coming in at their feet; Katara was moving water up the landing from the cistern, threatening to completely encapsulate the two of them in her element, where they would be utterly helpless. Toph stomped, the ground cracked open in several places, and the water drained away again. "Yeah, sure. Uh, what are you going to do with them?"

"Just make them, and you'll see."

It was a simple enough job, although made harder by the need to constantly fend off Katara's inventive attacks. A chill mist formed, then settled on the floor around Toph and instantly became super-slick ice. The waterbender hadn't managed to break Toph's connection to the ground, though, and in an instant the ice cracked into a million harmless splinters. At the same time, water kept trying to crash down on them from behind, while ice shards peppered their earth shelter from the front. Toph wished she could simply make a nice earth cave and wait until Katara got tired or bored, but Teo seemed to have something in mind, and wrapping them up in rock would make it impossible for him to see or act. Still, if Katara pressed hard enough, Toph fully planned to go turtle on her and wait the other girl out. Toph was much better at waiting than Katara was. Plus, she had company. Being alone with Teo in a rock bubble with artificial rain and snow pelting down sounded almost cozy, really.

She formed Teo's little spheres for him, nesting them in the depression where the rock they had been made of had once been. "That enough?"

"Should be." She heard the scrape of rock on metal, and then a strange, sharp swish – and a surprised yelp from Katara. "Hah, winged her," Teo said, sounding pleased.

"Teo, what have you got there?"

"Another experimental weapon. I'll show it to you later. I call it a slingstick. It's faster, more accurate, and hits harder than a traditional rope sling," he said. "Doesn't have quite as much range, though – I'll have to work on that. But it's not a problem here -- Katara's plenty close." There was another swish, and Katara's yelp this time was edged with anger. "I think the stones are too small and too fast for her to easily counter," he added, sounding just a little smug. "I noticed that when you benders spar, you seem to go for quantity over quality. I doubt I can hurt her with these – not that I want to – much – but I bet I can distract her pretty well." He set another stone into the end of his stick, pulled it back, then let fly. Toph heard the stone hiss out, propelled by Teo's formidable upper-body strength. Katara spat out a very unladylike word. "Got her in the knee that time," Teo said. "That has to sting."

"I like this plan," Toph said. "Legs are good targets. Arms too – try to hit her elbows and shoulders, it'll mess up her bending."

"Gotcha." There was a rattle as he picked up a handful of the slingstones and held them at ready. "I've got another trick in mind as well…"

Toph switched over from primarily defensive fighting to offense in an instant. Earth spikes slammed toward Katara from every direction – floor, walls, ceiling. Katara whirled in her protective cocoon of water, which kept any of the spikes from striking home.

Until Teo leaned out to the side of his shelter and flung a handful of slingstones at her feet. Only a few of them slipped past Katara's water shield, but one was enough. Toph felt the shift in weight as the waterbender's left foot came down squarely on one stone, and Katara stumbled and went down. She turned as she fell, transforming the clumsy plummet into a graceful roll, but the end result was the same – for just a moment, nearly her entire body was in contact with the ground.

A moment was plenty of time for Toph. The ground opened up under Katara and at the same time flowed over the top of her, pinning first her wrists and ankles, then swiftly covering everything else except her mouth, nose, and eyes.

The water in the cavern subsided and ran back into the cistern.

Toph moved up and stood over her fallen friend, hands on hips. "Huh," she said. "I think that's the fastest I've ever taken you down."

Katara's voice was muffled but still comprehensible. "You had help. No fair."

"Oh, now you talk fair! Lady, you attacked Teo – if there was a rule that he was supposed to stand around and play helpless hostage, no one told either of us about it."

Katara made a noise that might have been a laugh if she'd been able to move her jaw more. "Okay, you win. The door's in the back there."

Toph didn't feel like letting her guard down just yet. She was fairly certain that Katara was well and truly stuck, but something still didn't feel quite right. It wasn't that the fight was too easy – Katara clearly had not anticipated Teo being relevant to the brawl, and had paid for that oversight – but rather that Katara didn't sound very defeated. "Teo, go check it out, please, while I keep an eye on our adversary. Watch for traps – I don't trust Bumi any further than I could throw the Unagi."

"I'm on it, slugger." He made his way carefully up the landing, past the green lights, and saw the outline of a stone door cut into the wall. There was a crude handle on the side. He looked carefully for any kind of trigger mechanism, and finding none, warily put his hand on the handle and tugged.

The door didn't budge. Teo switched from gentle tugging to serious yanking, putting his shoulders into it. The door didn't even creak. He stopped, panting slightly, and stared at it. "Uh…Toph, got a problem here."

"What is it?"

"This door doesn't have any hinges. I don't think it's really a door -- just a shape cut into the rock face. I think you're going to have to check it out."

Toph scowled down at Katara, who was giggling. Either that or choking to death – the sound was a trifle ambiguous – but Toph would bet her championship belt that it was giggling. "Oh, very funny." She stomped off up the landing.

Sure enough, there was nothing behind the "door" but a very large amount of unbroken rock. Toph had to admit it would have been pretty funny -- if it had been someone else had been taken in by the trick. "It would serve Bumi right if I just tunneled my way out of here."

"Why don't you?"

"It would shake things up too much, upstairs. The Omashans have honeycombed parts of the mountain pretty well, plus they have buildings of all kinds hanging off the edges. If I messed up and set off an avalanche, there wouldn't be anything even slightly funny about the kind of damage it would do. I expect they got a few scary rumbles just from the little bit of earthbending I did down here just now."

Teo made a puzzled noise. "But if that's the case, how did Bumi tunnel down here to let Katara in?"

Toph frowned, placed her hands flat on the "door", and reached deep inside it using her ground sense. "There are traces of earthbending here, but they're very old. No one's moved this rock in at least a hundred years, I'd guess. He must have just, I dunno, dropped her down the elevator shaft and into the water? It's not like getting out of it would have been any problem for Katara."

"Then how are we getting out? How is Katara going to get out?" Typically, Teo sounded intrigued, instead of irritated or worried. "That ceiling's a long way up. Can you carry us up to the hatch and earthbend us out? I mean, you got in the same way I did, right? The elevator shaft?"

"Yep, I got the shaft all right," she commented, thinking hard. "I don't think I can get us up there. The weight of the rock will break it apart if I try to dangle a bubble from the ceiling. And I can't go up inside for the same reason I can't turn this stupid fake door into a real one. I guess it's time to interrogate the prisoner." Toph stomped back down the landing to where Katara lay encased in rock – and still giggling.

"Are you ready to admit defeat yet?" she asked, much too sweetly. The effect was a bit spoiled by the rock around her face. "Bumi said he'll let you out as soon as you give up."

It was a true statement, but Toph was not even close to finished. She had hardly gotten warmed up, really. "How did you get in here, Katara?"

"The same way you did," the waterbender replied.

Toph rolled her eyes. "Try again."

"Oh. Right." Katara sounded embarrassed now. "Well, in that case, I refuse to answer on the grounds that I'm -- grounded. Let me out and I'll tell you what you need to know – oh. That line's not going to work either, is it?"

"Nope. If you don't mean it, don't bother to say it. Just spit out what we need to know and I won't let Teo torture you."

"What, you're going to let him do it? I don't rate your personal attention?" Katara managed to put on a fairly good imitation of being miffed.

"He took you down, so he gets to torture you. It's one of the rules."

"One of what rules?"

"It's on page eighty four of the scrolls of the Word of Toph. Good book – you should read it."

"You really should," Teo added. "Then you wouldn't get stuck being subjected to – this!"

Toph waved her hand and the rocky cover over Katara peeled back ever so slightly – just enough to reveal the soles of the waterbender's feet. Teo moved in, did something, and Katara shrieked.

"Damn you, Teo!" she cried, "Stop tickl –aiiiiyii!"

Toph remembered well the glorious day when she had discovered that Katara's feet, never allowed to touch the icy ground of her home at the south pole, were soft, and sensitive – and very, very ticklish.

"I keep telling you to ditch your shoes and you won't have this problem," she chided her friend, as the other girl howled and writhed, trying to get away from Teo's maddening fingers. "But no, you never listen to me."

"That's rule one of the Book of Toph," Teo commented, taking another swipe at Katara's exposed soles. "Always listen to Toph."

"I – ah ha hah! – I see why you – ack! – why you like him," Katara gasped.

"Yep. He follows the book of Toph – oh, and gives great foot massages."

"I just bet – eeek! Okay, okay, enough! Stop! Stop! I'll tell you what you need to know!"

"Do I have your honorable parole, in the name of Aang?"

"I swear my parole," Katara sighed, "in the name of Aang. Now let me out of this thing."

They had played games like this before, even during the war years. The rituals were well known, and Toph had to admit she'd been missing such things lately, with the gang being so separated and occupied with their own tasks. Except her, of course. Despite everything she'd done and seen, her parents had refused to let her take any official part in the great changes sweeping the world after Ozai's downfall.

To her dismay, Zuko had backed them up, no doubt under pressure from the Lady Ursa. "You need to get to know your folks," he had insisted, quietly but with the absolute stubbornness that had so startled her when she found it in a firebender. "And more importantly, they need to get to know you. Give them a chance, Thumper. They might surprise you." He had been mostly wrong about that, although her folks had lightened up a bit, and she was no longer treated as prisoner. But she hadn't been given anything useful to do either. After being an integral part of the Avatar's ultimate triumph, she had been returned to her status as pampered noble's daughter. Mindful of the her friend the Fire Lord's suggestion, she had tried to be as good a daughter as she could manage, but she still missed, terribly, not being at the center of things any more. If it hadn't been for Aang's regular training visits, drop-ins from the others, chaperoned visits to the Fire Palace, and, of course, Teo, she wouldn't have been able to stand it.

Perhaps that was why she was unable to fully enjoy the show Bumi and the others were clearly putting on for her benefit. Tonight wouldn't last. Tomorrow she would be home again, and the others, except for Teo, would all be off doing very important things, rebuilding a world nearly destroyed by madness.

But at least she had Teo. After Aang, after Sokka, after Zuko, finally Teo had come. And he had been worth waiting for.

Toph waved a hand and Katara's rocky prison crumbled. The waterbender stood up, brushing off bits of stone and dirt as she did so. Whatever outfit she had been wearing was probably ruined, Toph thought. "Okay, Katara. How do we get out of here?"

"I'll have to take you."

"Are we supposed to trust you now?" Teo said.

"She gave her parole," Toph said. "It's a rule from our old games. If she breaks it, none of us will ever speak to her again. For at least week. She swore on Aang's name, so that's that." She turned to the waterbender. "Where exactly is the exit?"

"Below the surface of the water. That's how I got in, and it's how I'll take you out." She stepped to the edge of the landing, and the water made way for her. Toph and Teo followed her into the gap, which closed in around them as they went deeper. Suddenly there was a drop off in front of them, and Katara stepped off it, closing a protective bubble around the three of them. They sank for a while; Teo began to complain about the lack of light, but Katara seemed to know where she was going. Eventually they touched down lightly on the soft muddy bottom of the cistern, and Katara walked them all the way across the huge pool to the wall at the far side. Toph sensed a tunnel in it, and sure enough, that was where Katara led them – into the tunnel, and then up the seemingly endless shaft of water at the far end. Finally, they emerged from the water in another room that smelled of green fire.

"The door out is just over there." Katara pointed it out to Teo. Toph could sense it, and the large room that lay beyond. "You go on ahead."

"Who – or what – is waiting in there?" Toph asked.

"I can't tell you that. You'll have to find out for yourself."

Toph rolled her eyes, but moved toward the door as instructed. She heard Teo's steps behind her – and then an "OOF!" of displaced air and a heavy double-thud. She spun around.

"You're not out of the water yet," Sokka said. He had a firm grip on Teo with one hand, and Toph could feel that the other hand held his space sword at her boyfriend's neck.

"You had better have dulled that thing, Snoozles, or I'm going to stick it someplace where the moon won't shine on it."

"Stop nitpicking," Sokka said. "The point is, I've got a hostage. So what are you going to do about it?"

Toph shot an accusing look at Katara. "You didn't say you had a partner. That's breaking parole."

"He's not my partner. I had no idea where he'd be stationed. I figured it would be somewhere around here, but hey, you never asked me. Not my fault."

Toph said some bad words and turned to face this newest challenge.


	7. Before Dawn

_**Chapter Seven: Before Dawn**_

**Note:** Sorry for the delay getting this chapter out; real life jumped on me for a while. I should be able to post regularly again this week, and hope to finish the story. The pace on this one is a little slow, because I'm a little rusty after taking two weeks off. Put up with it and next chapter will be better, I promise XD )

**Teaser: **

"_Excuses, excuses," Sokka said. "Now, what are you going to do about my hostage, huh?" _

"_Why should I do anything? I know perfectly well you're not going to harm Teo, Sokka."_

_Sokka sighed. "Since when were you such a spoilsport? Play along, okay?" _

"_If I play along, you're going to be so mashed up it'll take Katara weeks to heal you." _

* * *

"Sokka, I love games as much as you do, but this one is just stupid. You know I can turn you into paste in about two seconds if I want." Toph considered the situation for a moment. "I would like to know how to managed to hide your life sounds from me though." She could hear his heart and breathing now, if she tried, but they were strangely muffled. Toph found that a bit alarming.

"New stealth suit," Sokka said, smug dripping from his voice. "It's something the Mechanist came up with by accident while messing with some rubber. The material absorbs sound pretty well. We've already used it to soundproof the lab – which is nice, because the neighbors are complaining a lot less. I was wondering how it would do against you. Pretty cool, eh? I told you I was Sokka the Silent! Well, Sokka the Mostly Silent really, but that doesn't sound half as good."

"Hmph. Katara was distracting me." Toph heard Katara start to protest, then the waterbender thought better of it and swallowed whatever she was about to say. Her parole prevented her from helping out Sokka, but apparently the rules of the game required her not to help Toph and Teo either. Or maybe she just didn't want to.

"Excuses, excuses," Sokka said. "Now, what are you going to do about my hostage, huh?"

"Why should I do anything? I know perfectly well you're not going to harm Teo, Sokka."

Sokka sighed. "Since when were you such a spoilsport? Play along, okay?"

"If I play along, you're going to be so mashed up it'll take Katara weeks to heal you."

"Really?" It was odd, but suddenly Sokka sounded more serious. "I mean, I know you could squash me like a fly, but how could you be sure I wouldn't have just enough time to kill my hostage before you hit me? Would you take that chance?"

Toph frowned and thought it over a little more carefully. She had rarely found herself involved in hostage situations. That stupid mess with her old Earthbending teacher and the Rumble promoter didn't count – they weren't out to hurt her. A few years later some bandits had tried to grab her for real thinking to get money out of her father, but that had quickly ended in severe embarrassment for the would-be bandits – embarrassment, and more than a little pain. She'd never been in a situation where someone had taken a hostage specifically against her, though.

Then she caught the sound of Teo calling her name using his undervoice. This was a trick they had discovered only recently, and it had mostly been used by Teo for making her laugh during formal dinners and similar boring events. By pretending to speak without really speaking, Teo could make words that only Toph could hear. And right now, he was saying, "Toph. Let me handle this. Okay?"

She knew he would be watching carefully for her response. Her first impulse was to tell him no. Sokka wanted them to play along, and in a real situation she would not have wanted Teo doing anything risky. On the other hand, Teo had proven many times that while he didn't mind her fussing over him and helping him out every now and then, he was quite capable of taking care of himself.

Toph decided to trust his judgment. She inclined her head ever so slightly in Teo's direction, and heard a subvocalized "Thanks!" in return.

Teo said, "Sokka, you want us to make like this is real, right?"

"Yeah, I do," the Water tribe warrior replied, still sounding halfway serious. Strange, thought Teo. Sokka should be grinning like a maniac right now at having managed to surprise Toph, but he wasn't.

"Okay then. Just remember that you asked for it." Right after the brief warning, Teo leaned forward, then bit down savagely on Sokka's wrist where it stuck out from the sleeve of the stealth suit.

Sokka yelped and reflexively jerked his arm away. Teo pivoted in place, brought his truncheon up, and whacked Sokka on the side of his head, just above the temple. Sokka dropped like a stone for the second time that night. Teo grabbed him to stop him from hitting the ground too hard – despite what Sokka had said about playing along with the scenario, Teo wasn't taking chances on letting him get truly injured for the sake of the game. Katara grimaced when the truncheon hit home, and quickly came over to check her brother out.

"I'm sure he's fine, Katara," Toph said. "Sokka's got the hardest head of anyone I know."

"I don't disagree with that, but there's only so many times someone can get clubbed in the head without it causing problems." Sokka, half-conscious, groaned pitifully. Toph could tell he was faking it, though. Well, mostly faking.

Katara could tell too, but she summoned healing water for Sokka anyway. "You deserved that, dummy," she said as she tended to Sokka's bruised skull and the oozing bite mark on his wrist. "You were holding your sword too far away from him. You should have had it right up against his neck. Master Piandao wouldn't be happy with that sloppiness."

Sokka groaned pitifully again, this time faking it so obviously even Teo could tell. "Master Piandao never taught me how to take hostages! And even a dull sword can cut – I didn't want to risk any accidents. Me accidentally cutting Teo's throat would have really upset Master Piandao." Sokka tried on another groan for size, but got no sympathy. Shrugging, he gave up on the theatrics. "Besides, it was supposed to be me and Suki together, but she had to stay at the Fire Palace when one of her trainees got hurt defending a village from a herd of rampaging boarquepines. Not fair."

"Excuses, excuses!" Toph said, mimicking Sokka perfectly.

"You should have bowed out, then," Katara said. "But nooo, you had to try the suit." She rolled her eyes at her brother, who was now sitting up and looking much less glassy-eyed than he had been a few moments ago. Toph thought it was a shame Suki couldn't have joined in – Suki knew how to handle hostages. Her presence would have made Sokka's scenario a lot more plausibly dangerous. Of the pair, Suki was the one with the killer instinct behind her pretty blue eyes. Sokka could fight, and fight well, but at heart he was more an explorer than a warrior. Suki clearly preferred it that way, and Toph did too.

"So, what now? Do we get to take you two hostage against whatever's coming next?"

Katara eyed her with a thoughtful expression. "If you think that's the best course of action here, yes."

Which was a strange answer. "I don't suppose I'm allowed to torture you to find out what this is really all about, huh?"

Sokka chimed in, that semi-serious tone back in his voice. "If that's what you think you should do, we'll play along." He grinned. "I promise to scream realistically."

"I don't get this. I thought you guys were just trying to make my birthday less annoying and more interesting, but in some ways you're taking this awfully seriously. C'mon, tell me what's really up. You know I hate being left in the dark. So to speak."

"You know you don't really want us to tell you," Katara said. "You want to find out for yourself." She pointed toward a wooden door at the end of the passage. "The answer's that way, and it's going to be dawn soon. You'd better get going."

"Oh, now there's a deadline too?"

Katara voice took on a note of chagrin. "Oops. Er. Well, yes."

"I wasn't supposed to know that, was I."

"Not really. No." Katara sighed. "Oh well. Can't unspill milk."

"You can," Toph pointed out.

"It's just an expression!" Katara snapped. Toph was pleased by the annoyance finally showing in Katara's tone. No sparring match with Katara would be complete without that.

Teo motioned toward the door. "If there's a deadline, Katara's right – we should get moving."

"Hmph. Maybe I should just curl up here and take a nap. That'll show Bumi I can't be jerked around."

"You know you don't want to do that, Slugger," Teo said. And was absolutely right, of course. If she didn't play Bumi's game, chances were she would never find out exactly what he was up to – which was a risk she didn't care to take, as her curiosity was already raging. Clearly it had something to do with her Tian Mi Shi Liu, what with the dawn deadline and all, but she couldn't imagine what. The sixteenth birthday party was an old Earth Kingdom tradition, but these days it was just an excuse to see whose parents could throw them the biggest and most lavish birthday bash, more an excuse for social showing off than anything else.

Nothing to do about the mystery except plunge on ahead. Sooner or later Bumi would have to stop making her jump through hoops and come clean.

She hoped.

She heard Teo unlatch and open the door. "Um," he said, taken aback. "Slugger, you're not going to like this."

"Like what?" she said. She stepped through the door, and without warning was nearly blind again. "Pebbles and shards, the floor's made of wood!"

"Not just the floor," Teo said. Toph stretched her senses as well as she could when deprived of direct contact with the earth. Behind her she could clearly sense the corridor leading back into the cistern, and Katara and Sokka and Teo in it. Ahead, there were only the faintest of earth echoes. "The whole room is lined with wood. Floor, ceiling, walls, everything. There's some paper lanterns for light, but that's no help to you."

"Separating me from the earth? Didn't we already do this in the cistern? Bumi's starting to repeat himself. We dealt with it before, we'll deal with it again." Toph motioned Teo through the door, gave a cheery wave in the direction of the Water Tribe siblings, then pulled it shut behind her. "You're going to have to lead me to the other door, flyboy. I assume there is another door somewhere?"

"Yep. It's at the far end. The room's maybe thirty feet square, ceiling about fifteen feet up or so." He offered her a guiding elbow, and Toph took it, hating the blindness but enjoying an excuse to link arms with Teo.

They had only taken a few steps when Toph heard the far door latch click, and the door itself swung open. She could tell that someone stepped through, but couldn't "see" well enough to tell exactly who it was. Teo stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh," he said. "I get it. The wood's not there to mess with your senses, Toph. Or at least that's not the main reason."

"You're sharp as a knife, Teo," said the intruder. Toph face-palmed at the sound, instantly understanding what Teo meant.

"Hi, Sparky," Toph said, resigned. "We're in a wooden room because –"

" – because wood burns," the young Fire Lord finished. "If you want to go through this door, the only way out is –"

" -- Past you," Toph said.

(To Be Continued)


	8. Glass Houses

_**Chapter Eight: Glass Houses**_

**Teaser: **

_Toph thought for a moment. "The only brilliant idea I have now is – run. Can we make it back to the cistern door? I'd much rather fight Sparky in a rocky cave with water in it than a room lined with wood."_

_"The fire wall's too hot and high to try that – which I'm sure is the reason he put it up in the first place."_

_"Oh. Good idea. Sort of makes me wish Sparky really was as dumb as Sokka always used to insist he was."_

* * *

"How did you know?" Zuko asked, his tone light and amused.

"Lucky guess," Toph said. She heard faint sounds as Zuko shifted into a new position – firebending stance, it had to be. A moment later a wash of heat swept over her. From the feel, she guessed Zuko had put up a circle of fire around her and Teo. "I'm also guessing Bumi's going to be up next."

"I'm not going to comment on that, and you know it," Zuko said.

"Now would be a good time for one of your brilliant ideas," Teo murmured in his undervoice.

"It certainly would," she muttered back. "Too bad I don't have one. How about you?"

"Er. Let him burn up all the wood, then take him out?"

"If this were real we'd be dead long before that. Besides, he doesn't need fuel – it's just point and fry."

"Oh right. I forget firebenders cheat like that."

"Yep. It's totally not fair." Toph thought for a moment. "The only brilliant idea I have now is – run. Can we make it back to the cistern door? I'd much rather fight Sparky in a rocky cave with water in it than a room lined with wood."

"The fire wall's too hot and high to try that – which I'm sure is the reason he put it up in the first place."

"Oh. Good idea. Sort of makes me wish Sparky really was as dumb as Sokka always used to insist he was."

"Sokka said that?"

"That and worse. Katara too. Of course that was back when Sparky was running around half-crazed trying to grab Aang, so he wasn't exactly thinking well. I think their low opinion was understandable."

"I'm standing right here, Toph," Zuko said, sounding just a trifle miffed.

"Well, is that all you're going to do, Fire Lord Stupid? Just stand there while we chatter away?"

"I'm not here to take you down. I'm just here to prevent you leaving until you give up." Zuko added, "And since Katara mentioned the deadline, I'll just say that you're running out of time. Better think of something quick."

Then, to Toph's astonishment, she heard him murmur under his breath, "_Sand. Glass."_

What in the name of big boulders did that mean? Was Zuko trying to trick her? Why would he bother? He had them pretty well stuck. Was he trying to help them? Again, why? Katara and Sokka had taken their roles pretty seriously – unless Katara's slip of the tongue hadn't been an accident. Or Sokka's uncharacteristically sloppy sword handling. Wouldn't she have noticed if they were lying? Sokka had that suit…and Katara had learned to blood bend her own body, so she could have regulated her heartbeat and breathing…

Toph found that the idea that her friends were letting her win to be very irritating. "Sparky. You're not planning to throw this match, are you? If you do, I swear I'll turn your palace upside-down and leave it that way."

"What? Oh. Uh. No, of course not. I'm sure you can figure your way out of this all on your own."

Toph heaved an utterly exasperated sigh. "Zuko, I keep telling you – you're such a terrible liar I don't even need to hear your heartbeat to know what's up."

"Ah. Right. Maybe I should just shut up," said the Fire Lord.

"Yeah, maybe you should."

Teo muttered, "What makes you think Zuko's not trying to win?"

"He said something to me in undervoice that I think was a clue to help us get out of this. I'm not sure – it could be a very subtle trick, but subtle tricks really aren't Sparky's style. More like tons of drama and then blowing stuff up."

"I'm standing right here, Toph!" said Zuko. Definitely miffed.

Toph ignored him. "Anyway, I can't make heads or tails of what he said, but I'm kind of insulted by the idea that he – and maybe Katara and Sokka too – have been holding back and letting me win. And how did Zuko know how to use undervoice anyway?"

"Oh. My fault," Teo said. "I told him about that fake mind-reading trick we pulled at the Spring Equinox celebration. He was very amused."

"That explains that, then. But not that 'clue' he dropped, if that's what it was. I can't decide if I want to try to use it or not."

"What did he say, exactly?"

" Just two words: _sand_, and _glass_." Toph did a quick search with the little sensory ability she could muster in here, and came up empty. "But there's no sand here, let alone enough to make glass with. And what would be the point anyway?"

"Hm." Teo swept a hand across the wooden floor. "Actually, there is a tiny bit of sand on the floor here. Just a few grains, though." He looked up at Zuko in time to catch a quick, smile on the Fire Lord's face. Zuko noticed him looking and attempted to blank his expression. He didn't succeed very well. Teo decided Toph was right – Zuko really was an open book. He wondered, not for the first time, how Zuko managed to be an effective diplomat while being such a terrible liar. Maybe the rest of the world just found it a nice change of pace.

Clearly, Zuko thought the tiny grains of sand on the floor were important somehow. Teo wiped sweat off his face – it was getting quite warm in here, and he could feel it even through his soaked and chilly clothes. He had been wishing he'd thought to ask Katara to dry them off, but it was turning out to be useful to be damp.

Teo tried to ignore the heat and focus on the problem at hand. Sand on the floor. Why would there be sand on the floor down here? He knelt down, both to give his aching legs a rest and to get a closer look at the flooring. The boards were closely fitted together, but with no sign of pegs or nails holding them down. "Toph," he murmured. "Stand in front of me so Zuko can't see."

"What are you doing?"

"Never mind, just cover me. Move about two short steps to the right."

Toph did as instructed, though a lot more slowly and uncertainly than usual thanks to being unrooted. Shielded from Zuko's sight by Toph and the curtain of flame, Teo got out his hunting knife and slipped it between two of the boards. The fit was tight, but he managed to get a tiny bit of leverage and slipped one of the boards up little by little until he was able to pry it completely free. Underneath was a layer of fine white sand, into which the whole wooden floor had been laid to make it firm and level.

"Toph. Take one step backward – carefully."

"Huh? Why?"

"Just trust me and do it."

Toph gave him a doubtful look, but slid a foot backward until it found the gap in the floorboards, then gingerly lowered it a few inches into the hole. When she touched the sand, her face lit up with delight. "Sweet!"

With a sharp wrist motion, Toph swept the sand up from under the floorboard and raised a curtain between the two of them and the flames. The floor sagged noticeably as she siphoned out the supportive layer. More sand streamed in to fill the empty area she had created, hiding the stone floor from her, but the sand should be more than enough to do the trick, Toph thought. If not, she could just keep pulling until it all came out, the whole floor collapsed, and she could reach the rock beneath. If Zuko gave them enough time.

Toph whirled the sand into a ring and brought it crashing down on Zuko's circle of fire, snuffing it. She grabbed Teo's arm and helped him run for the cistern door, but he stumbled, and long before they reached the goal, a new, much wider wall of fire had sprung to life in front of it. They had to backpedal hard to keep from running into it face first. Toph called the sand back to her and spun it into a cylindrical protective curtain around her and Teo. It would keep Zuko at bay, as long as he kept to his word about being there to stop them rather than knock them down. She wondered briefly how long it was until dawn – and then wondered why she cared.

"Now what?" Teo asked, panting.

"I don't know about you, but I've had enough of being on the defensive here." Toph stepped into the open space on the floor, rooted herself, and brought up both arms sharply. A tidal wave of sand roared out and raced toward Zuko's position. He countered with a searing wall of flame that rushed out to meet the incoming attack. When the two waves hit, the sand absorbed the heat and began to glow, and in an instant shining droplets were falling from the air, burning smoking holes in the wooden floor wherever they hit.

"Wha--? Oh. It turned to glass." Toph frowned. Zuko's second hint had been "glass". Now there was glass here. What were they supposed to do with it?

"Think fast, Thumper," the Fire Lord said, corralling them once again in flame. "Time's short."

Toph thought fast. She envisioned enclosing herself and Teo in a glass dome. Then she thought about the amount of heat the molten glass would be giving off, imagined them choking on the heat and falling to the floor, then burning to death when her control over the liquid glass dome gave way. No, that obviously wasn't right. They needed some way to handle the heat, but she couldn't think of a thing.

"Teo. I can protect us with a glass dome, but it's going to get real hot in there. Got any ideas?"

"Hah. No. Do I look like a firebender to you?"

Toph made googly eyes at him. "I don't know – do you?"

"Absolutely not."

Hmm. A firebender could withstand the heat – could even draw it off and harden the glass, keeping it from falling in.

Suddenly she got what Zuko had been trying to hint at. For a moment pride rebelled, telling her not to use the solution that had been handed to her, but she stomped on her ego with a large dose of practicality. This was a game, anyway. (Probably, whispered the voice of her imagination, which she ignored.) She wouldn't hesitate to use an advantage given to her by an enemy in war, and this was, if not war, certainly a fight.

Toph pulled even more sand out from under the floor. The floorboards groaned and buckled, making both Teo and Zuko unsure of their footing for a few moments. During that time, Toph took her sand and flung it outward toward Zuko, aiming for the space above the firebender's head. Zuko saw it coming and blasted fire toward it. The blast hit, and Toph shaped the rain of sand that resulted into a tight, thick, dome-shaped wall that enclosed Zuko completely.

Zuko let loose a flew blasts that tore holes in the dome, which Toph immediately repaired. In the wake of the blasts, gleaming liquid crystal droplets appeared. Toph grabbed those too and bent them, flattening them out and mixing them with more sand. With surprising speed, shimmering translucent arcs of glass became visible, replacing the shifting white surface of the spinning sand wall.

The heat became intense, and Teo had to step back a few paces. Toph was stuck in place, needing the opening in the floor to root herself properly for the bending. Teo saw that her face was streaming with sweat, but she showed no sign of letting up on her attack. He quickly knelt down and went to work with his knife on some more floorboards, clearing a larger space for her at a more comfortable distance from the molten glass. "Slugger, back up!"

Toph had no idea what Teo had been up to back there – any sounds he made were swallowed in the roar and hiss of the swirling, melting sand. But Teo said to back up, and she trusted Teo, so she took a firm hold on the molten glass to keep it from falling in on Zuko, unrooted one foot and slid it backward. It dropped into Teo's new hole in the floor, and Toph grinned. "All right!" She quickly got her second foot into the new space, then felt her way as far back as she could, away from the furnace heat of the dome. Teo was still busy tearing at the floorboards, making even more space.

"Hey Teo, how's Sparky doing?" She remembered what Zuko had said about the heat of enough molten glass being able to overcome even a master firebender. "He's okay in there, right?"

Teo squinted at the glowing glass, which was both too bright to look at comfortably and somewhat murky in texture. Through one floating pane he had a brief clear view of the Fire Lord.

"Hah. He's grinning. So I'd say he's fine."

"Oh. Well. Wasted worry, then."

After that it was just a matter of time. Toph kept the sand moving, Zuko obligingly kept up the heat, and within a few minutes the entire dome was complete. Toph knew it was over when she felt the heat suddenly vanish from the glass, leaving it solid and whole. Zuko had apparently had enough of the heat and had bent it out of the dome.

"So, I think I just created a new exotic dish," Toph commented. " 'Steamed Fire Lord Under Glass.' What do you think, Teo?"

Teo chuckled. "Well, he doesn't look particularly steamed – in fact I'd say he's pleased – and that glass dome of yours isn't going to win any design prizes – but we can definitely get past it to the door. As long as Zuko doesn't have any other tricks up those long robe sleeves of his, I'd say we're in the clear."

"If he does, he probably won't use them. He basically told me to stuff him into a glass ball, I just didn't quite get what he was driving at. At least that's what I think he meant. Remind me to ask him when all this silliness is over."

"Will do." Teo brushed wood shavings off his hunting knife, sheathed it, and offered an arm to Toph. "May I see you to the door, my la—OW!" Toph had not allowed him to finish the sentence before whacking him. But she did take his arm. The one that wasn't aching.

Teo looked into the glass dome as they passed. Zuko smiled and waved at him, little flames dancing on each fingertip and reflecting glittering sparks from all around the curved walls of his prison. Teo gave him a nod and a wink in turn as they reached the far wooden door.

"Well, here we go," Teo said. "How many more doors do you think we have to get through?"

"I'm guessing this is the last one. I mean, who's left? It pretty much has to be Bumi behind here." She smacked a fist into her opposite palm. "And I'm more than ready to rumble with him. So let's get on with it."

"Your wish is my command," Teo said, earning himself another swat and a scowl. He flipped the latch and swung the door in.

Beyond was another large cavern lit with hanging oil lamps. It was made of raw rock all around, and was nearly as large as the cistern. At the very top, a dark shaft rose up into darkness, a strong breeze wafting out of it.

The next – last? – challenger stood in the exact center of the room, leaning on a staff, a flying lemur perched on his right shoulder.

Not Bumi.

Aang.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Toph groaned.

(To Be Continued)


	9. Discretion

_**Chapter Nine: Discretion**_

**Teaser: **

_Toph did a quick sweep of the room. No exits other than the one they'd just come through, and the shaft way overhead. Nothing in the room but bare rock, except…_

_"Hey Teo," she whispered. "Can you see what's over in the corner there? It's not solid enough for me to get a good image."_

_She felt Teo start with surprise. "Uh, yeah! It's our two-seater glider!"_

_"What? What's that torture device doing down here? And what are we supposed to do with it against an airbender, who also, oh yeah, happens to be the Avatar?" _

--

Aang grinned his big infectious grin at the two of them and waved. "Hey Toph, Teo. Good to see you two. Have you had a good time?" Momo mimicked the wave and chittered.

Toph considered that for a moment. "Overall, I'd have to say yes. I could have done without the cistern part though. Why not just start with a fight?"

"Oh, I dunno." Aang's tone was bright, almost gleeful. "Maybe someone wanted to know what you'd do faced with a challenge you couldn't beat by fighting. Or maybe someone thought you could use a dunking. That perfume you were wearing was pretty strong."

"Ugh, don't remind me. Mother insisted I wear it. I nearly choked." Toph did a quick sweep of the room. No exits other than the one they'd just come through, and the shaft way overhead. Nothing in the room but bare rock, except…

"Hey Teo," she whispered. "Can you see what's over in the corner there? It's not solid enough for me to get a good image."

She felt Teo start with surprise. "Uh, yeah! It's our two-seater glider!"

"What? What's that torture device doing down here? And what are we supposed to do with it against an airbender, who also, oh yeah, happens to be the Avatar? This is nuts."

"Maybe it's so we can get out through the vent. But we'll probably have to, ah, get past Aang somehow. No, scratch that – we'd need Aang to actually help us in order to use that."

"Maybe it's a red herringsquid. Maybe we can run back to the wooden room." Aang hadn't made a move since his first wave, other than to reach up and scratch Momo under the chin. Momo crooned.

"Maybe we're supposed to take Momo hostage?" Teo suggested. Momo looked up at him and gave an short screech, hooding his huge eyes. "No, Momo, I don't believe you understood that." Aang snickered. Momo made a grumbling sound and went back to enjoying Aang's attentions.

"Let's try moving toward Zuko's room, see what Aang does." Toph started edging backward. Aang didn't move. No elements stirred. Toph kept backing up, Teo keeping in step. Still no action from the Avatar. Teo flicked a hand at the latch, shoved the door open, and the two of them darted through. No wall of wind, burst of fire, whip of water, or spike of earth arose to stop them.

Toph spotted Katara and Zuko immediately, and after a little careful searching, was able to sense Sokka in that annoying suit of his. The glass dome still stood, although with a man-shaped hole melted in the side. Katara was studying it with interest. She looked up. "Hey guys. Did you give up? Want me to take you back out through the cistern?"

"Would that count as winning?"

Sokka laughed. "Of course not. You have to get past you-know-who in there."

"Ugh! C'mon, Teo and I are supposed to take on Aang? That's ridiculous." Toph scowled, then had a sudden thought. "Unless…maybe you guys want to help us out?"

This time it was Zuko who laughed. Toph sighed, realizing she was doomed to being the source of humor here, and not because of her witty remarks. "I take it that's a no, Sparky?"

"Wish I could, Thumper," he said, genuinely regretful. "It's a great idea, but against the rules."

"I should have known. Well, if you're not going to help, why are you still here? Were you going to rush through the door as Aang's reinforcements?"

"Not that either," Katara said. "We just want to watch the fun. We were trying to figure out how to put a nice thick piece of glass in the door there for easier spectating."

"Well, don't expect me to help you with that. Make it out of ice."

"I thought of that, but Aang's likely to use fire at some point. Could be dangerous if the window melts and we get blasted by accident." Her tone became more businesslike. "Oh yeah, that's the other reason I'm still here – just in case of accidents like that."

"That's good to hear, I guess," Toph grumped. "Hey, did you two Water Tribe peasants cheat to let me win? I know Sparky didn't, but I wasn't so sure about you two."

"Of course not!" Katara sounded offended. "I mean, we were just sparring, not fighting for real, but I assure you I was trying to win."

"Me too," said Sokka. "Not that I thought I really had a chance against you two without Suki, but I was doing my best."

"But you have that suit. And Katara might have, say, bloodbent her heartbeat and breathing so I can't tell she's lying, right?"

"What?" Katara said. "Now you're just getting paranoid. Messing with my own heartbeat and breathing could easily be a fatal experiment, so no, I didn't do that." She paused. "Huh. Do you think I'd actually be able to fool you if I did do that? That could be useful."

"Never mind, forget I even suggested it. Way too dangerous. Much, much too dangerous. Just put the idea right out of your head."

Katara snickered. "Too late, Toph. Speaking of which, it's going to be dawn very shortly. Hadn't you better stop procrastinating and get back to dealing with Aang?"

"Argh! I admit, I'm not exactly eager to go in there and have my head handed to me, even in fun. Seriously, how are Teo and I supposed to fight Aang? Even if the three of you helped I still wouldn't bet against him. Unless I got really good odds, of course."

"I'm sure you'll think of something," Zuko said. He put his hands on her shoulders and started gently shoving her back toward the room of doom.

"Hey, hotman, one side – that's my job." Teo elbowed Zuko aside – none too gently, either – and took over. Toph, growling, let herself be herded back to the place of her imminent defeat. Teo gave a wave to the three defeated challengers and got waves in return, then shut and latched the door, and turned to face the Avatar.

Aang hadn't moved from his spot, though he had taken a seat in the lotus position and was quietly humming a mantra to himself with closed eyes. Toph entertained a brief image of pouncing on him instantly and taking him down by surprise, but before she finished having the thought, she heard the wind pick up and Aang gracefully rose to his feet without any visible effort. "No luck with the rest of the gang, huh?" he asked, still obnoxiously cheerful. As usual.

"Against the rules, apparently."

"Yeah, I know." Aang tapped his staff lightly on the ground, and she heard its wings spring open. "Ready to get started? You know the deal – only one way out, you have to get past me to use it."

"Even if we do get past you we can't use it," Toph groaned, feeling completely defeated for the first time in this seemingly endless night.

"You'll think of something," Aang said, sounding almost exactly like Zuko. Over the past four years of rebuilding, the two of them had started echoing each other's thoughts in a surprising number of situations. It was a good thing, but still a little disconcerting after their rough start. Toph had to keep reminding herself that air and fire were complementary elements, not opposite.

Teo tugged on her sleeve. "Toph. I've got an idea. It might be really stupid, though."

"Stupid is more than I've got right now. Go for it."

"Okay. If I get blasted, promise you'll pick up the pieces?"

"After I'm done yelling at them, yes."

"Good enough."

Teo gave her shoulder a little squeeze, then walked straight toward Aang. Other than a slight shift of his stance, Aang made no move to attack. He allowed Teo to walk right up to him, although he did have his staff held in defensive position. Teo reached out and rubbed Momo behind the ears. Momo made contented noises at him.

"We thought about holding the little guy hostage," Teo said, "but we didn't want to get bitten."

Aang laughed. "Yeah, that's an interesting idea, but Sokka tried that with you and learned better."

"Anyway, I had this thought. And it went like this: you're the Avatar."

"…And?"

"And it would be stupid to fight you."

"I wish you could convince everyone of that," Aang sighed. "Too many still want to try. And I really don't like fighting."

"Yeah, I know. So I thought – maybe it's not necessary."

Aang studied him thoughtfully. "Really?"

"Well, I did say maybe. You said we had to get past you to get out of here, but that's not actually true. What we need is for you to give us a hand getting out of here. And I don't recall you saying at any time that we had to fight you to get it. So I'm asking – Aang, will you help me and Toph get out of here?"

Toph squawked. "Hey! Teo! That's not how a rumble works!"

"Quiet over there, Slugger. Who said this was a rumble?" He turned back to Aang. Aang was smothering a laugh behind his hand. "Ah. Does that mean it really is the stupid idea I thought it was?"

Aang flung an arm over Teo's shoulders. "Nope! I'd be glad to help you two escape. I just thought I was going to have to kick you around for a while before you got the idea. I'm glad it didn't go that way."

"WHAT?" Toph yelped. "We're not going to rumble? We just had to – had to – "

"Had to ask me to help," Aang finished. "Why wouldn't I? I never said I was here as your enemy, Toph. Wouldn't be very fair, would it? And you have to admit, all the challenges so far have been fair – more or less. Bumi's like that. If he wanted to harass you for the sake of harassment, he didn't need to go through all the effort to set this up, right?" Aang waved at the glider. "Go check out your glider, make sure nothing came loose when we were getting it down here. Then we'll be off. It's almost dawn."

"So…what would have happened if I had attacked you?" Toph asked.

"We'd have fought, you'd have lost. Then maybe you'd think of the right approach, but I'd say Teo saved you a lot of time. And some bruises."

"Saved you a few too, Twinkletoes!"

He laughed again. "I'm sure. Just as well things went the way they did, I'd say."

"Hmph. There was a small chance we could have taken you out, you know."

"Of course. I have a lot of respect for your fighting ingenuity and always have, Sifu Toph." She sensed him giving her a formal bow.

"Oh, stop that. I haven't been able to teach you a thing in over a year now."

"Not true. I learn from you constantly, as I do all my teachers."

Toph harrumphed at him again, temporarily at a loss for words.

"Everything looks fine over here," Teo called from the glider. "So how do we do this?"

Aang beckoned Toph over to the horrible machine, and she reluctantly went. Aang took a stance, and wind billowed up, lifting the glider up off the ground and holding it suspended in midair. "Climb on!" he said. Teo was already settling into his seat and sorting out the safety straps. Toph groaned, but gingerly hoisted herself up off her beloved ground and into the awful, awful air gizmo. It swayed as she climbed aboard, and she had to clutch at Teo to keep from tumbling back out. Teo didn't seem to mind. After she got her seat, he helped her find and secure her own harness.

"Ready?" Aang called.

"No!" Toph moaned. Teo patted her reassuringly.

"We're all set," he announced. "Ready for lift off!"

Aang's staff shot out, and a huge gust of wind came from behind the glider and threw it up and forward. Toph shrieked and hid her head against Teo's shoulder while Teo pealed out delighted laughter. "Where are we going?" she shouted over the rush of the air.

"Straight up the vent!" Teo replied.

"Oh nooaaaaaaaaahhhh!" she yelled as the glider tipped almost vertical and began a rapid ascending spiral up the shaft. It took only a few minutes at most, but it seemed like an eternity to Toph before the glider burst into open air and leveled off. Teo reached out and grabbed the control bars. He saw that Aang had followed them up through the vent using his staff glider, and was pointing down to the city below, where a large number of green-fired torches burned in the shape of the Earth Kingdom symbol.

"Set down there!" Aang shouted.

"What do you say, Toph? Play along? I could just steer us away and off the mountain. We could land in the woods and do a little camping, just the two of us…."

"I don't think Aang would let us get away with that," Toph said. "Besides, I just want to get down as quickly as we can, flyboy."

"Gotcha. Down we go."

Teo put the glider into a dive, earning another small shriek and a grab from Toph. "Hey, you said to get down quickly," he said cheerfully. "No complaints!" At close to the last second, Teo pulled up hard on the control bar, and the glider meekly settled to ground in the exact center of the torches. Aang touched down lightly next to them.

Toph struggled out of the glider and did her usual welcoming embrace of the solid earth, ignoring the chuckles from Teo and Aang at her antics.

Then she caught the sound of many booted feet approaching. She looked up and got the image of an unmistakably large, knobby body bearing down on them.

"Hey! Miss Tofu! Who said you could run around kissing my city, eh? EH?"

(To be concluded)


	10. Sweet Sixteen

_**Chapter Ten: Sweet Sixteen**_

**Teaser: **

"_My, my, you're always such a feisty one. I don't intend to duel you. No challenge in it." _

"_What?! I hope you're ready to prove that!"_

"_Tsk. Don't be foolish, girlie. I've got more than seven years for each of one of yours. Youth and skill will always be beaten by old age and treachery. Remember that. Now come along. Don't make me have my guards drag you."_

* * *

Toph popped to her feet and glared at the old king. "What did you call me?" she said.

"Doesn't matter, does it? Got your attention, it did. Now, explain to me what you and your hooligan friends are doing playing games in my catacombs and risking my city!"

"WHAT? You put me down there!"

"That's beside the point. Poor excuse. Hrmph. You come with me right now, young lady. I want an explanation." Toph could envision his fluffy white brows beetling as he shoved his face in close to hers, close enough for her to smell his breath. He'd had something with a lot of garlic in it for dinner. The thought of food made her stomach grumble.

"You don't want an explanation, you old loon. You want a rumble. Well, I'm ready any time you are!" She rooted herself and took hold of the earth, ready for whatever Bumi might have in mind. She hoped.

"My, my, you're always such a feisty one. I don't intend to duel you. No challenge in it."

"What?! I hope you're ready to prove that!"

"Tsk. Don't be foolish, girlie. I've got more than seven years for each of one of yours. Youth and skill will always be beaten by old age and treachery. Remember that. Now come along. Don't make me have my guards drag you."

"Hah! Like they could. And last time I went with you, you dropped me into a hole full of cold water, old man. Why should I come with you again?"

"Because I never repeat a trick, as you know very well, little toughie. Can't you hear the birds singing? The sun will be up in a few minutes, and I want to be in my palace when dawn breaks. It has a lovely view."

"Like I care about the view." Toph sighed. "But whatever, I'm tired of arguing. C'mon, Teo, let's humor him. I'm hungry and sleepy."

"Me too," Teo said, as he fell in step beside her.

Bumi led them to one of the mail carts and motioned them to get in.

"Don't these things go down the mountain, not up?" Teo asked.

"They're made of rock. They go where I tell them to go," Bumi replied, leaping into the cart in a way that showed no trace of his hundred-plus years. Teo muttered, "Is this a good idea?" in his undervoice.

Toph responded without bothering to whisper. "Let's just go and get this over with. Besides, if he tries anything, well, the cart is made of stone, and I won't make it easy for him."

"Get in, get in, you dawdlers! The sun's almost at the horizon." Bumi caught Toph around the waist and boosted her straight into the cart, ignoring her yelp of protest.

Grumbling, she settled down in the cart as Teo climbed in to join her. "Old man, what's this obsession you have with the dawn, anyway?"

"Hm? You know that. It means your Tian Mi Shi Liu is officially over."

"…and? So what?"

Bumi snorted. "It didn't used to be called Sweet Sixteen, you know. Back in my day, it was the Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù."

"The Frivolous Pomegranate of War?" Toph guessed.

"Ah! Today's youth are nearly illiterate. Silly girl. No. It means the Challenge of Sixteen."

"Yeah, so?"

Now Bumi sounded exasperated. "Don't be dense, Toffee." He waved a hand and the cart with the three of them in it started to scoot up the mountain at very respectable speed. "The Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù wasn't a party. Well, there was sometimes a party afterward, but never mind that. It was a rite of passage for young Earth Kingdom citizens. The young person's family, friends, and teachers would get together and decide the best way to test the teenager to see if she was ready to assume the responsibilities of full adulthood. If she didn't pass, she didn't get a birthday. She stayed sixteen – and legally a child -- until she did pass. It wasn't just for girls either. The boys had to pass the test too."

"Huh. Well, I like the sound of that better than I liked the my party, but I'm probably in the minority on that. Why did the custom change?"

"The war, mostly." His voice softened unexpectedly. "When our young people began having to take up arms against the Fire Nation at younger and younger ages. Like you did, at twelve. It was patently foolish to deny the unfortunate youngsters who had to fight, and often die, the status of adult."

"Oh." Toph recalled that Teo had been badly injured as a very young child, thanks to the war. She reached out and took his hand. He squeezed it, but said nothing. "So are you saying I've been an adult since I hooked up with Aang? Hah. I've been trying to tell people that for years – especially my folks – but they always ignore me."

"I would say you declared your adulthood when you agreed to teach the Avatar, yes. But your parents aren't Omashan citizens – their province is part of that young idiot Kuei's kingdom. And Kuei's a bureaucrat at heart. Wants legal proof of everything. I think he plans to be buried with his scrolls when he dies, he loves them so much." Bumi snorted. "Legally, by the old laws, you weren't an adult at twelve, even though you were nearly killed several times over in the struggle against Ozai's madness."

"Yeah, I know. I had this explained to me several times over by Sparky – er, I mean Fire Lord Zuko."

"I know who you meant, dearie. Speaking of young fools…well, he's less foolish than many his age, I'll say that for him. He had to back up Kuei's decision – he could hardly start this New Era of his by breaking Earth Kingdom law to suit his own wishes, now could he?"

"I guess not."

The cart ground to a stop in front of a pair of very large ornate doors inlaid with gold and jade. "Ah, home at last. Will you and your young man join me for breakfast?"

"You're not planning to slip anything strange into the food, are you?"

Bumi chuckled. "Try it and find out. Or go hungry!" He waved a hand, and the stone doors flung themselves wide open for their monarch. Bumi's palace was very comfortable and nicely appointed in an elegant, minimalist style. Compared to Kuei's palace complex in Ba Sing Se it was small and plain, but Bumi seemed to like it. And Omashu, while comfortably wealthy by the standards of most Earth Kingdom cities, did not have a chance at competing with Ba Sing Se in terms of opulence.

A few servants moved quietly about their tasks. One of them opened a door to what Toph sensed was a spacious room mostly filled with a huge table. She smelled a wide variety of breakfast dishes, and her stomach let out an embarrassingly loud growl. Bumi snickered. "Sounds like you're going to have to risk my food, girlie."

"Guess so. Hey Teo, maybe you should wait to see if I keel over or – " She heard munching sounds from somewhere near her elbow. "Oh. Never mind." Toph found a plate, filled it with dumplings, lotus seed cakes, and other goodies, and dug in.

"I haven't had anything nefarious done to the food," Bumi said. "The games are over now, Toph. For today, at least. No promises about tomorrow!"

Toph looked up, half a lotus cake sticking out of her mouth, at the unexpected seriousness of Bumi's tone. She regretfully put the delicacy down on her plate and turned to face the old king. "I'm guessing you're finally going to tell me what all of this is really about. Am I right?"

"You are. Although a part of it, at least, was just to give you something interesting to do today. I've noticed you're not a big one for formal entertainment of the type your mother prefers."

"You've noticed? What, were you spying on me?" Toph said.

"I've been watching over you since you were born, dear. I always keep on eye on my family, even the distant ones, such as my little blind great granddaughter."

Toph was glad she had put down the sweetcake, or she would have choked on it. "I thought you said no more games tonight, Bumi!"

"So I did. Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. I'm your great great grandfather on your mother's side, and your great great great grandfather on your father's side. Where do you think the Bei Fong noble line started, eh? Right here in Omashu, that's where."

"But – but – I didn't even know you had kids!"

"Twelve, to be precise, with three different wives. The last one passed away from me twenty seven years ago, and I haven't had the heart to take another since I lost her." Toph heard the old king pick up a teacup and take a sip. "Then there's the small army of grandchildren, and the larger army great grandchildren, then your generation and the one after that. It's one advantage of living so long – you get to see a lot of descendants. Of course, you also get to see some of them die before you. That part is not an advantage."

"But neither of my folks are earthbenders!"

"True. The only kind of earth your father is interested in bending is the kind that can be made into coins. And yet here you are, dear, the second best earthbender the Earth Kingdom has ever seen, teacher of the Avatar, inventor of metalbending and many other notable achievements. All while you were still a child. You never thought that was strange?"

"I…well, I used to wonder, when I was younger, if I was adopted…what do you mean second best?!"

Bumi ignored her outraged exclamation. "No no. You're the child of your mother and father, girl. Never doubt that. But sometimes the old blood arises anew from streams long thought dry. I have been watching you all your life, Toph. How do you think I knew to send the Avatar to you? For your sake, as much as his."

Toph sat back on her cushion, hunger forgotten. "So…I…I don't know what this means." Sensing her confusion, Teo slipped an arm around her waist. She hugged it to her gratefully.

"Well now, that depends on several things. Tell me….what did you think of your performance during your Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù?"

"Uh…I don't know. I just wanted to finish it. I thought you were just playing games with me. Weren't you?"

"Yes and no. I seldom do anything for just one reason, Toph. They were games, yes, but they were also, as in the old days, a chance for you to prove yourself to the people who care about you, and more importantly, to prove yourself to yourself." Bumi chuckled. "Not that I've often seen you lacking in self-confidence, my dear. So, did you learn anything?"

Toph thought back to the night's events. "I learned that…having friends at your side is a strength, but can also be a weakness, because they can be used against you." Teo gave her an extra squeeze. She patted his hand. "I learned that those who challenge you aren't necessarily your enemies, and that not every situation that looks like a fight has to be one. I learned that people you thought you knew can surprise you, and that some friends will go out of their way to help you even if you don't want them to. Of course I already knew a lot of that. Oh, and I learned my boyfriend is a genius. Which I already pretty much knew, too."

" ' Pretty much' knew?" Teo said into her ear.

"Can't have you getting an inflated ego," she whispered back.

"Hmmm. I like your answers, Toph Bei Fong." Bumi stood up and went to the far wall of the room, which turned out to be a pair of bamboo shutters hiding a doorway that led out onto a balcony. Beyond, Teo could see the sky turning a delicate blushing pink against pearly blue, streaked with darker rose from a few early-morning clouds. "Come view my city with me, Toph," said the old king, stepping outside into the morning air.

Toph started to make one of her standard sarcastic comments about being blind, but thought better of it. She stood up, leaving Teo's embrace with regret, and followed Bumi. The air was crisp and cool, chilly with the departing winter, but warmed by the promise of summer soon to come. Toph could smell the warm scent of the fertile farmlands surrounding the walls of Omashu, the lands that kept the city fed. From the smell, there was a lot of cabbage seed being planted down there.

"What do you think of my city, my dear? Take a good look."

Toph looked. Not with her eyes, but with her feet; her hands on the balcony's stone railing; her mind, heart, and soul. Saw the mountain, the whole of it, how the Omashans lived in and on it, always in harmony with the rock, respecting it but not fearing it. The Omashans were one with their home in a way the residents of sprawling Ba Sing Se never could be. They were true citizens of the kingdom of the earth.

"I think it's beautiful," she said, all sarcasm set aside.

"Hah. I gave you the opportunity for a blind joke, and you threw it away?...Well done, my girl."

They stood in silence for a long moment. Bumi finally broke it.

"I'm glad you like my city. I'm going to put you in charge of it one day."

Toph gave him her patented "I'm talking to a crazy person" look. "What, you want me to run things while you spend your days playing with Flopsie? I don't think so, old man."

"No, my dear. I mean you're going to be Omashu's Queen when I finally become one with my beloved earth."

Toph's mouth fell open. "The…what now? Bumi, are you saying you're –" She broke off, unable to complete the thought.

"No no! I don't plan to die any time soon, so don't start redecorating my palace just yet. But I'm one hundred and eighteen years old, Toffee-taffy. There's only so long I can go on – or would want to. We're at the dawn of a new age here. When I pass, Omashu will need a ruler who can bring her into that new age without losing what makes her special. I think you're up to the challenge."

"Why me?"

"Many reasons. First, you're of my blood. This isn't required, but I think it will reassure my people. Mind you, I have sixty-one living descendants at the moment, so don't think it makes you too special. And some of them might, ahem, object strenuously to you taking the throne, so you'll have to deal with that. You should be particularly wary of Fā Kuáng Quǎn – he's tried to have me assassinated twice so far. Fortunately he's as incompetent as he is greedy.

"Second, you have important connections. You're the teacher of the Avatar, friends with the young Fire Lord with all the newfangled ideas, and one of the heroes of Ozai's defeat. Those are impressive credentials. They'll help keep people like Fā in line, give my people a ruler they can be justifiably proud of, and be a warning to any outside source of aggression that Omashu is not an easy target and they should look elsewhere.

"Third, you are the best young earthbender I've ever met. Someday you may even surpass me – thought I doubt it. Don't glare at me like that – show respect for your elders, girl. As you can tell, we Omashans live in harmony with the mountain. Sometimes things have to be nudged to keep the balance. You have the ability to perceive when something is wrong, and the power to fix it, so that no avalanche or cave-in will threaten my people's lives and homes. At the same time, you can ensure that my people don't overtax the mountain by digging too deep into its roots, and you can help keep the flatlands that feed us all fertile and productive so that no one starves.

"Even if you weren't a child of my line, Toph Bei Fong, you would still make a fine Queen for Omashu. And now that you are fully adult in the eyes of the law, you are free to make your choice. So what will it be?"

Toph gulped. "I …have to decide right now? Just like that?"

"Yes. Omashu needs a decisive leader. Oh, you'll have to find a mate other than that crippled commoner boy who can't even earthbend, of course."

"Oh, well, then. That settles that." Toph turned to walk away. "Teo! We're leaving!"

Bumi's bony claw caught at her shoulder. "My, my, I must really have shaken you up for you not to see through my little joke. Even I wouldn't presume to tell you who to love, my dear. Two of my wives were commoners – it absolutely doesn't matter. In fact, based on the way he helped you through your Tiǎo Zhàn Shí Liù, I'd say he's an excellent choice. Smart, versatile, able to watch your back. Good qualities in a royal spouse."

Toph felt herself blushing, just as Teo poked his head out onto the balcony. "Is everything okay out here, Slugger?" He paused. "What's with the red face?"

"Uh…nothing. It's the wind, it's chapping my cheeks."

"Yeah, right. Tell me another one, Slugger."

"Well….Bumi wants me to take Omashu over for him when he dies. Which won't be for a long time yet!"

"Oh yeah? Sounds like a good idea. I always knew you were a princess."

Toph dropped her face into her hands. "Ugh, not you too. You really think I should go along with this?"

"Absolutely. You'd be great at it."

Bumi cackled. "Yep, excellent spouse material, this one!"

Teo looked at him. "Excellent what?"

Toph broke in. "Never mind that! Just – help me out here. Bumi wants an answer now."

"So tell him yes and come back to breakfast. The shrimp shumai is terrific."

"I have a couple of suggestions for what you can do with your shrimp shumai! I've got a real issue here, Teo."

"I don't really think you do, but I'm behind you whatever you choose. You know that, Slugger."

Bumi cackled again. Teo wondered what the old man found so funny.

Toph turned back to the old king. "So if I say yes – what happens? Will I be stuck here in Omashu? I've had enough of being a pampered, powdered doll."

"I'm sure you have. Such a waste of your talents. Really, your parents should be ashamed. On the other hand, they produced you in the first place, so that's a point in their favor. But to answer your question, I'll want you to spend at least a couple of months here every year so you can learn about the city and the city can learn about you. Plus, you'll need to show up here for regular earthbending lessons – you and I have some serious work to do on that score. You have to teach me to metalbend, for one thing.

"Aside from that, your time is your own. Although I think someone else has some ideas about that." Teo saw Bumi lean over the railing and wave. A few seconds later a brown and white streak flew by, followed by a bright golden one. Appa roared in welcome as he circled around, Aang and Katara in his saddle. Shai, carrying Zuko and Sokka, tried to roar too, but her voice broke into a squeak at the end. Teo would swear the young dragon looked embarrassed.

The balcony was far too small for either animal to land, but that didn't stop their passengers. Aang opened his glider and was the first one to land on the balcony. He swept Toph up in a huge hug the moment he touched down. Zuko arrived a second later, having run up Shai's neck and launched himself off her head, utterly ignoring the deadly fall awaiting him if his leap fell short. Katara flung out a stream of water and froze it in place, then slid her way across the ice bridge. When Sokka complained that he wasn't as crazy as Zuko and definitely wasn't going to jump off of Shai's head, his sister thoughtfully provided him with an ice bridge of his own, complete with ornate handrails. Sokka gave her a remarkably dirty look as he crossed over.

"I thought perhaps you'd like to talk it over with your friends," Bumi said. "But don't take too long, my dear. This offer expires when the morning bells sound in the city – which won't be long now."

"You all knew about this from the start, didn't you?" Toph said.

"Of course!" Katara said. "This took a lot of setting up, you know. Planning it out, getting everyone together in the same place at the right time. We all worked very hard on this."

"Well, not all of us," Sokka added. "I mostly just sat around and let them do all the heavy work."

"But we had a lot of fun doing it, so it wasn't like work at all," Aang said.

"And I needed a couple days off from the Fire Palace anyway," Zuko said.

"So you all think I should go along with this?"

"Of course!" said Aang.

"Yes," said Katara.

"Absolutely," said Zuko.

"I say no," Sokka said. "Royalty are all jerks. I mean, look at Zuko – you want to turn into that?"

Quick as a striking snake, Shai's head shot forward and clamped around Sokka's midriff. Ignoring his shouts of alarm, the dragon gave him a thorough shaking, then set him back down on the balcony, breathing hard but otherwise unhurt.

Bumi cackled with mad glee. "I like that beastie of yours, fire boy!"

"I like her too," Zuko said, rubbing Shai's head. "Good girl, Zǐ Sè Shǎi Lóng."

"It's all fun and games until someone loses a rib cage," Sokka grumped.

"Sokka, were you serious about that no vote?" Toph asked.

"Nope. I just couldn't resist the opening. I think it's a great idea, Toph. You've always loved bossing people around."

"You're looking to get hurt again, Snoozles."

"All right, all right!" Sokka raised his hands in surrender. "I give up. My answer is yes, Toph. Take Bumi's offer. I would say something here about you having to put up with Bumi, but I think I've pushed things far enough for the moment."

"A wise choice," Bumi said. "Didn't know you had it in you."

"Hey, I'm wise!"

"Yeah, you're a real wise guy," Katara commented, rolling her eyes.

"So it's unanimous, is it?" Toph said. "I suppose you'll all hate me if I say no?"

"I certainly will," Zuko said cheerfully. "I'm tired of being the only one having to deal with Sokka's royalty jokes."

"Thanks, Sparky, that's really motivational."

"Glad I could help."

Toph looked at the person whose vote mattered most. "Teo, are you sure about this? I mean, being royalty means being a target. And it means the people close to you become targets. I don't want to take a chance that you – "

"I can take care of myself, Slugger. And I could never forgive myself if worrying about me kept you from doing what you were clearly born to do. You can stop looking for excuses to say no. You want the job, and you know it. Tell the nice old king yes already."

Sometimes Toph thought Teo knew her better than she knew herself.

She turned to face Bumi, Teo at her side, her friends standing around her in a loose semicircle. "Yes," she said simply.

Bumi grinned until Teo thought his head might split, then swept Toph up in a huge bear hug. Aang led the gang in a round of cheers for "Her Royal Majesty Toph Bei Fong!" which Toph thought was overdoing it.

"All right, now that all that's done with, can we get back to breakfast?" she asked plaintively. "All I've had is one dumpling and half a lotus seed cake."

"Sorry to have to delay your meal even further, Your Highness," Zuko said, "But there's one further matter to take care of." He brandished a scroll case, and drew out a suspiciously heavy and thick scroll.

"Oh pebbles, what now?" Toph groaned.

Zuko unrolled the parchment and began to read. "I, Earth King Kuei, by my authority, hereby confer upon the Lady Toph Bei Fong, having passed the legal age of sixteen, the title of Earth Kingdom Ambassador to the Court of the Fire Lord." Zuko let the scroll roll back up. "There's a lot more here but it's just a bunch of legal chatter. I know you've been itching to be a part of the Restoration, Toph. Here's your opportunity. You wouldn't be able to live with your parents anymore, though – you'll be traveling all over the place, because I plan to thoroughly overwork you. What do you say?"

Toph didn't need any convincing on this one. "I say, 'When can I start, Sparky?'"

"I think you owe it to your folks to at least give them a few days to get used to the idea of your leaving. Plus you must have a few things at home you'd like to bring to the Fire Palace with you. Say, one week from today?"

"Three days," Toph countered.

"No. One week. You've lasted four years, you can handle one more week. I expect it will be quite a while before you manage to get back home for a visit, so let your folks have a little more time with you. Who knows, they may discover they'll miss having you around."

"They'll get over it," Toph said. "And they'll love all the new status this will give them in their social circle. Having me around would just ruin their enjoyment, I bet."

"Just one week, Toph. Then I'll personally come by on Shai to get you. I'll even dress up for the appearance, so your folks' neighbors can be suitably impressed by the visit. Deal?"

Toph sighed. "One week it is. Deal. Now – breakfast? Please?"

While they had been outside on the balcony, servants had moved in, rearranged some bamboo walls, and transformed the dining room into a banquet hall so that Toph's true Sweet Sixteen party could begin. She ate, drank, laughed, and shared stories with the friends she had missed so much, and in the future would be seeing much more of, she was sure. It lasted hours, but eventually the previous night's lack of sleep began to catch up with everyone, and small epidemics of yawns began to break out. Bumi reasserted control and ordered everyone off to their guest rooms to get some rest.

Toph made sure to keep Teo close by her as one by one the others of the gang peeled off to go to bed. Finally, it was just the two of them at the door to Toph's guest room. They stood close together for a long moment, enjoying each other's warmth. Then they shared a lingering kiss.

Teo sighed. "Well, here's where we part. I'll see you tomorrow, Slugger. Or maybe I'll just start calling you Princess, what do you think?"

"Don't you dare," Toph said in her most threatening voice.

"Okay, okay. You'll always be Slugger to me, I promise."

"That's not what I meant. I meant – don't you dare leave me alone tonight."

Teo stood very still for a long moment. "Are you sure?"

"I'm legally an adult now, Teo. Everyone says so. And adults get to make their own decisions." She took a firm grip on his wrist. "And this is mine."

She drew him inside, and shut the door.

_The End_


End file.
